Earlier this week, MK based artist Anna Berry - whose incredible past work included the remarkable paper Breathing Room in the centre:mk - delivered a pop-up guerrilla art installation.
She picked one of the new city’s famous underpasses to host the forest of plastic garlands, which enjoyed just a two hour window before removal.
It was her homage to the deceased Midsummer Oak tree which had been resident in the city, long before the city even existed:
“Milton Keynes is a special place. Built with beautiful ideals, and designed with thought, care, heart, and intellect. It’s a place to feel strongly about,” Anna said.
“This piece celebrated Milton Keynes and what makes it. A place comprises people and environment. I feel that somehow the memories that are created in a place become woven into the fabric of that place.
“They become the roots we put down. I wanted to create a piece where people could get lost in a magical forest of Milton Keynes memories. I wanted this to be in an underpass, as they are classic and beautiful examples of Milton Keynes infrastructure. Also, I find them to be places of almost mystical significance - sunken below ground-level, where ways cross.
“I love the beauty of modern materials like concrete, and wanted to mirror this with the beauty of my PVC trees; in contrast, say, to the fake grass which now occupies the former place of the Midsummer Oak.
Hidden among the garlands and pictures of people’s positive, happy memories from the new city was a tiny chunk of the Oak.
“Like a saint’s relic,” Anna says.
“As well as celebrating Milton Keynes, this piece also commented on how the beautiful architectural ideals of a city for living in have been betrayed by successive councils and planning departments,” Anna said.
“Nothing typifies that more than the building of the new shopping centre, right across Midsummer Boulevard, and around the beloved ancient Oak, which long pre-dated the city. I think the death of this magnificent tree, and its replacement with fake grass, represents the betrayal of Milton Keynes in the name of naked commercial greed.
“For me, the Oak itself has become the martyr and saint of Milton Keynes (May She Rest In Peace). The wood chunk is all that has been salvaged from her, and it lies, like a medieval saint’s relic, in the centre of this beautiful plastic mausoleum.”
