Europarc Project - A/M180

Marc Renshaw has a long-established interest in non–places and transitional zones which include motorway services, airports and business parks. His local research point is The Europarc, marketed as ‘the flagship business park of North East Lincolnshire’ and its surrounding environs. The site is a ten minute drive from his rural Lincolnshire home. For Tail of the Pup, Marc focuses upon a 38.5 mile stretch of road - the A180/M180, which runs from the business park to the Doncaster (Hatfield) motorway services. Using the road as an identity projection device, the artist travels along this relentless path to nowhere - documenting his findings in the form of digital drawing, film (available to download below) and text:

I drive along searching for something as familiar shadows oscillate along the edge of a virtual roadside wall. Further along the A180, X scans the masked figures walking in and out of the motorway cathedral, a slipstream to nowhere, anonymous whilst evidenced on incalculable CCTV cameras.
X falters in a hedgerow under a sign of blue.
Services. M180 Doncaster [North] 2m
M62 [W] Ferrybridge.
The ghosts of Little Chef past drifted around back down at the new Starbucks cafe at Barnetby Interchange.
Manna is held in the coldest of hands on a boat heading out to a religious convention centre eastwards of the Irish Sea.
Youthy.
I awoke fearful of the needle screaming ‘I’m too small!’
I keep coming back to that park surrounded by the motorways but can’t quite find my way there as the drone from the A180 Riviera echoes along the mundane stretches of unremarkable tarmac.
9.42
Jason white vanner.
10.12
Red Rowan tree berries.
SOS 1596B
I pull over past Immingham – Ulceby? To my right.
A HL logistics truck pulls up behind me.
I feel vulnerable as the side wind from passing trucks shake my vehicle to the core.
X tunes into a couple passing under the bridge of grey bathed in Audi pride.
Blue masks. Alcoholic cologne. Jaded drumbeats.
‘Neither of us are great conversationalists.’ Another she said to another he.
Distortion.
It tunes out, turning its attention to the residual sound emanating from a lost wheel trim gleaming in the late summer sun.
X loiters next to the alt-modern thank you sign in the newly laid car park.
Piped in lounge Starbucks music steals Yo La Tengo riffs evoking mythical summer days that never happened.
A phone scroll reveals ‘test and trace exposed.’
Are you staying in? Are you OK to do track and trace?
I spill my drink on the large round table – all of it. Lake Latte. Tall.
X floats out along the roadway across a sprinkling of 1970’s playschool glitter embedded in the paint of white.
I gaze from an elevated position in search of the virtual bridge flashing the text MARCC back at me.
I notice two kids throwing stones and large, dried out clumps of soil from the tops of mud mounds at the longy.

Marc is an artist based in Lincolnshire

To download the video. Download>

Europarc Project blog: https://europarc.blog/