Bolwick Residency
Bolwick Arts
Norfolk, UK
2004
Gayle Chong Kwan, Paradise Pending, Bolwick Arts, Norfolk, 2004
I layered actual planning permission requests with imaginary planning and competing plans for the development of a tiny island in the middle of Bolwick Estate. I contacted people who had ‘permission pending’ on planning applications within the area and asked them to draw and describe, as actual architectural plans, a tiny island in the middle of the estate, as though it were their very own paradise island. At the same time I also photographed and asked people to describe the changes in their homes for which they were applying for planning permission.
These ‘paradise’ island plans were then sent as actual planning application to the local planning department and the responses to these, along with the architectural drawings and photographs, sound recordings, were then exhibiteded in a garden shed, of a size before any planning permission was necessary. The planning department took the whole applications seriously and corresponded regarding temporary drawbridges and coral reefs coming under the Section 1.2 of ‘trees’. What came out of the drawings, conversations and recordings were the ‘metaphorical’ and ‘symbolic’ spaces their actual plans hoped to realise and how these related to their paradise island developments.
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Gayle Chong Kwan, Paradise Pending, Bolwick Arts, Norfolk, 2004
