Loop 033 printable

Volume 2, No. 9. May 24, 2002

An art of work
For Julia Midgley, the incongruities of an amusement park make for fascinating art. “There I was standing on a rock surrounded by Vikings,” the Liverpool artist said of her participation in the opening ceremony of the Valhalla dark ride two years ago at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in England. “I did a thumbnail drawing of a Viking taking a sneak smoke and another painting her fingernails.”

This experience was part of a two-year artist-in-residency program that has resulted in 200 drawings and paintings and two exhibitions, one running through July 24 at the amusement park’s Globe Theatre and one titled “Blackpool Pleasure Beach” showing June 6-29 at the New Academy Gallery in London. The park also has published a full-color book to accompany the exhibition.

Midgley’s residency was part of a millennium initiative by the Arts Council of England to place 1,000 artists in 1,000 residences. “The idea was that it would engage the general public in a dialogue with artists and enable people to watch artists at work,” said Midgley, a researcher at the Liverpool School of Art. “It would show that not all artists are subversive and antisocial.” The park provided her a studio in Goldmine Gulley between the Gold Mine and the Fudge Shop, and she would spend as many as three days a week there documenting the life and activities of Pleasure Beach and meeting visitors from around the world.

“One of the things that struck me more than anything else I’ve done is that people who go there go to have fun,” she said. “It gives an artist an opportunity to draw people at their most relaxed and unselfconscious. People will walk around wearing the most ludicrous clothes and hats with horns. I saw a group of grown men talking to each other and the whole time they were playing with yo-yos.”

Unlike other workplaces she has documented in the past, Pleasure Beach was a vibrant workplace full of artists in their own right. “Most of the people who work in the Pleasure Beach, the people I was drawing, have an arts background anyway. They are performers or sculptors building props or engineers and creative people. So, there was a common interest: they were interested in what I was doing, and I was very interested in what they were doing.” Then there were the rides, which Midgley described as “vast structures, and a gift for any artist who wants to draw.”

She described her role as a “fly on the wall,” and found that many of the staff were surprised to find her chronicling their workdays. “They felt quite flattered that management would think to have them recorded that way,” she said.

For a sample of her work from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, click here.