The City of Oxford is the whole world squeezed into a preposterous crossroads where everybody bumps into each other. And yet the fruit of this intense urban rub rarely shows up in Oxford's public places. There are few monuments to its civic creativity and vibrancy, very little in the way of street life apart from people struggling to get from one place to another. Lingering is nearly illegal. And in spite of being blessed with some of the most beautiful architecture in Europe, Oxford is rightly accused of being one of the most civically visually illiterate cities in Britain.
This infamous label was stuck on Oxford in early 2005 by English Heritage, referring to the municipal eyesores that are Oxford’s signals, poles, signage, and other concessions to the need to tame those motorists too infirm, lazy, or just plain stupid to leave their cars out of the city centre. But the charge of civic visual illiteracy is one I’ve personally felt for years. Oxford is the world centre of the English language, a city where the written word is held in higher esteem than even sport, money, and sex. When it comes to decisions that alter the visual environment, they are, in my limited experience, at best literal-minded, such as the boring bronze Ox that greets arrivals at the train station (message: we couldn’t think of anything else). At worst, they are hideous and mean-spirited, such as the infamous and expensive benches on Cornmarket designed specifically to be uncomfortable and impossible to sit in (message: you’re not welcome to sit and enjoy yourself--piss off and get to where you’re going).
Ever eager to find opportunities to make Oxford more interesting, Andrew Nairne, Director of Modern Art Oxford, convinced the city’s Christmas lights committee that it would be worth finding some funding to put toward an ‘artist’s tree’ to replace the city’s traditional Christmas tree on Broad Street. It all seemed too good to be true, and Andrew rang me soon after the meeting in October to see if I could cook up an idea for an artist’s tree for Broad Street. Because I had recently shown a popular installation at a Modern Art Oxford show in the spring of that year, it seemed sensible to the committee to ask me to do this. Apart from this one installation, I’d never done serious 3-D work, being a full-time illustrator of children’s picture boks. But I said of course I’d love to do it, and hung up, realising I’d just agreed to hurl myself off a cliff into the fog for the next six weeks.
