Wednesday 23 July 2008

I'm making postcards for Woodstock's Around the World - an exhibition my friend Martyn Brown is putting together for Art in Woodstock. I know he's had loads of cards on the vaguest theme of Woodstock from all over the world....but curiously none from Woodstock in Oxfordshire where the exhibition will be held. SO - I'm hard at it, making postcard interventions along the lines of my earlier series based on postcards of the Madonna titled 'Iconoclasm (Madonna & Child)'.

The first two are done - an aerial image and the other a four image composition of the Palace and gardens from different angles. Interestingly you can only select from four postcards on sale in the Post Office, where I'm told they are forbidden to offer a wider selection since the Palace have very tight control over images - which are otherwise only sold in the official visitor shop. Which you can only visit if you've paid the exorbitant entrance fee of £16.50 - even the 2,100 acres of parkland costs £9.50 to walk around. So a typical example of an English 17th C land grab - the whole lot were a gift to the Duke of Marlborough for giving the French a thrashing. And now its a world heritage site - so forever preserved for the few who can afford it, in the great tradition.

3 comments:

firefoodie said...

Nice blog site. The picture definitely aint you. I'm convinced. I do like the Blenheim idea 'though. One time I was walking the grounds with some visitors from Oz and we tried to 'inflation index' the cost of the project (rather subtly carved in stone in huge Roman numerals above the main entrance)to see what that meant in today's money. Blew out big time on the zeros - something like the GDP of a medium sized country. Firefoodie.

artmummy said...

Tell me you didn't really write that at 5.48AM! If so you are officially a nutter - the only other person who sends me messages at that time of night starts them with 'from the nut house' where he is currently incarcerated.

This is way more fun than facebook btw!

I'm wondering if lets say the current general fighting in Iraq, wins the battle and returns to blighty to be offered a brand new palace and a vast tract of Oxfordshire countryside as a token of HM's gratitude. The peasants I'm sure would gladly move off the land to honour such a war hero, who has saved us from the threat of unknown knowns that are still as yet unknown....or WMD's as they are also known.

Off into the sunshine for a cuppa now!

firefoodie said...

This blogsite must run on US time. All the UK blogs are posted at strange hours, even the Cogges blog.