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The Vacant Lot of Cabbages
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The Vacant lot of Cabbages, aka The Cabbage Patch, was a work of art that planted 180 cabbage seedlings on a busy corner site in Wellington Central, the central suburb of the capital city of New Zealand. The ‘art intervention’ was planted on 4 January 1978 and the site cleared on 21 June 1978.
Origins
[edit]Artist Barry Thomas conceived the idea for the Vacant Lot of Cabbages while convalescing for 15 days from an operation in late 1977 in Wellington Hospital. conceived of planting the ‘Vacant Lot of Cabbages’ on the corner of Manners St and Willis St.
The corner of Willis and Manners streets was previously the site of the city’s only continuous cinema the Roxy Theatre and the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel.
The world’s first green party; the New Zealand Values Party had already attempted to plant native trees, advocating for turning this private empty site into a public park.
The project
[edit]The work was in three parts.
1. The occupation of vacant private land on 4 January 1978.The site had lain vacant for 2.5 years and had become a civic “eyesore”. With the help of friends. Thomas occupied the site, trucked in topsoil, planted cabbages, and paid the initial costs of the work. Photographer Justin Keen photographed the event.
Thomas and associates cut the fence to allow purchased soil to be delivered. 180 cabbage seedlings were planted in the form of the word “CABBAGE”. After a day, reports of the “Mystery Garden” appearing in the media, Thomas approached local newspapers who had ran several stories on the project. Thomas duly claimed it as his own work of art and called it the “Vacant lot of cabbages” and challenged the public to display care, water, weed and participate as he was leaving the site, the garden and issue for the citizens to own. “It’s a unification of nature and culture. It’s now up to Wellington, whether they are cared for or driven over by motorbikes”
2. Artists, performers like Aileen Davidson and Chameleon, locals, and political activists then invaded and ‘domesticated’ the site with a number of other installations: large IBM 7330 computer drive plugged into the cabbage patch by Joe Bleakley; a pink ‘monocycle’ fixed high on an adjacent wall its pink paint trailing back under the cabbage patch to a street side drain by George Rose and Alister Barry; a scarecrow; a grave; a bath; a settee, TV set, letter box; and a toilet.
The Wellington City Council then cleared the site on the 21st of January without permission and removed all but two items – the monocycle and the ‘Cabbage Patch” as it had become known. The Vacant Lot of Cabbages had been deemed ‘probably harmless’ by the Deputy Town Clerk Allan Smythe in a memo to the city engineer. Two weeks later the site’s owner offered his permission to the Council to clear the site.
3. The Cabbage Patch’s final week involved two events: The Last Roxy Show and the Free Coleslaw party. Along with Landscape architect Bryan MacDonald and architect Ian Athfield, Barrie Macintyre and a host of performers from Sam Hunt, Lauris Edmond, to Ian Wedde, theatre troupe Red Mole, Musician Michelle Scullion, Chameleon, Aileen Davidson, Gaylene Preston, and Chris Lipscombe.
The Commission for the Environment funded the design and building of a traveling educational tree house to advocate for indigenous forest retention. Wellington High School students painted 3m high forests for the birds, a parade with people dressed as native birded marched down Willis street and the tree house was hauled by draft horses onto the site.
The city’s parks department provided free native trees and the entire site became an art and forest event.
To the chanting of “roast pork and cabbages” and Jan Preston’s band playing, Barry Thomas performed a ritualistic burning of the remaining brassicas dressed in a black catholic cassock over a white Arab dishdasha to highlight discordant conscience.
Documenting the work.
Photographer Justin Keen recorded the occupation and guerrilla gardening art. Thomas engaged with the two city newspapers, the Evening Post and the Dominion. In his first interview he laid down the gauntlet to the citizens of Wellington by saying he was leaving town for three weeks. His intention was to test people’s willingness to care for the vulnerable seedlings.
Many others like Joe Bleakley, associates and unknown contributors added to the Cabbage Patch site. The unsolicited contributions to the Cabbage Patch site over the 3 weeks Thomas was ‘on leave’ took the council and the city by surprise. The absentee site owner, Tony Kostanich, gave permission for the City Council to clear the site, but only after the council had cleared the site. The council left only the cabbages and a pink monocycle added by George Rose and Alister Barry, high up on the north wall of the site.
For the next four months the cabbages grew, and remarkably survived in this hostile site unvandalized. Citizens had developed a real fondness for them. Other political activists like WAG (Women’s action group) along with WONAC the women’s pro-abortion activists then contributed to the site in May 1978. Mayor Michael Fowler deemed the patch a positive thing for the city.
Photographer Ans Westra photographed the final days. The final event “The Last Roxy Picture Show” was captured in Sam Neill’s film “Red Mole on the Road”.
The site was developed into a low-cost arcade which is still extant. ref Perrots Corner
Legacy
[edit]The Vacant Lot of Cabbages was "an important moment in New Zealand’s art and social history".[1] It was a forerunner[2] of several movements which later developed their own unique identities: guerrilla gardening, tactical urbanism[3] conceptual and installation works of land art, temporary or ephemeral art, political, participatory art, community, interventionist, environmental, relational art.
the 1978 event, many writers and media from Television to The Listener, newspapers to Art magazines, encyclopedias to radio stations, Social media, bloggers, academics and art galleries have each contributed to the history of this early environmental work of art.
Te Papa Tongarewa – the country’s largest museum and art collector purchased Thomas’ archives in 2012[4] and 25 interviews were conducted of living participants. A visiting American mayor is reported to have said “Why we gotta have a cabbage patch in our vacant lots back home.”
Around the world guerrilla gardening and intervention arts from yarn bombing to Flash mobs have become very common… Banksy to Guerrilla girls, “food is free” to urban agriculture across the western globe. Tributes to the Cabbage Patch have also linked it to the worldwide trend of “Tactical Urbanism” and other groups like “Letting Space, the Performance Arcade, Cuba Carnival and the current Cuba Dupa carnival.
The “Vacant lot of cabbages” has earned a place in art history by being 4 years ahead of Works by Joseph Beuys’ “7000 Oaks” in 1982 and Agnes Denes’ NYC “Cornfield” also in 1982 also
Thomas and Michael Nixon together recorded 20 video interviews with people who were directly involved in the event. Te Papa Tongarewa are provisionally including these into the permanent collection.
Thomas also gained some notability by inventing “lightening shorts” rADz which he made with NZ Film Commission and NZ Arts Council (Creative NZ) funding. Four collections from 1997 – 2000, with over one hundred New Zealand young film makers, including Taika Waititi, Greg Page, Phil Simmonds. rADz fitted into mainstream advertising being 15, 30, or 60 seconds in duration and came with credits. Thomas took the rADz project internationally and lived and worked out of a canal boat in Camden in London for the years from 2000-2004 making around 100 rADz with aspiring mainly young film makers and communities in Manchester, Birmingham and London. He attended festivals such as Bastard TV (UK) and the Festival of Brevity (Rome 2001) where he earned the praise of Venice Film Festival Critics week selector and Il Messaggerro critic, Fabio Ferzetti who called rADs “searing and brilliant”.
References
[edit]- ^ Rowe, Neil. "The Artists' Co-op: Barry Thomas; Eva Yuen; Ian Hunter; Ross Boyd; Terry Handscombe Robin White". Art New Zealand. Retrieved 18 April 2023.
[2] Hantler, Mark, Ann E Taylor and JARL Society The Claremont Grove Street Directory, Wellington: JARL, 1978.
[3] https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/artist-stringing-people-together and https://issuu.com/dunedinschoolofart/docs/art_and_revolution_final
[4] https://ngataonga.org.nz/blog/film/barry-thomas/
https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1341887
[1] Sarah Farrer https://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2012/11/02/vacant-lot-of-cabbages-documentation-enters-te-papas-archives/
[2] City Farmer News https:\\cityfarmernews
[3] Simon Wilson 2022 NZ Herald Tactical urbanism. ref in the book the entire article