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Neon Rustique

Steve Hollingsworth 2001

By the time I found out 'Neon Rustique' had existed, it had been gone for some years. I missed one of the forest's brightest ever sculptures; a wooden billboard displaying some fluorescent tubes in the shape of a landscape vista, it was located over on the far side, placed in a spot overlooking Coniston Water on Grizedale's western slopes. Steve Hollingsworth says of the piece on his website:

"Neon Rustique was based on the idea of the 'distilled essence' of a picture postcard ie. sky, landscape and used the colours of blue and green neon to describe an outline of an imaginary landscape. I was interested in confronting the landscape as a construct and culturally defined through romantic thought as an antidote to the (then) growing industrialisation"

It could apparently be seen from the summit of the Old Man of Coniston, so perhaps it is no surprise that the complaints regarding light pollution soon came flooding in. As well as building 'Neon Rustique', Hollingsworth also produced a collection of photographic work and hosted an exhibit at Lawson Park involving deconstructed refrigerators.

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