David Grandorge: Trouble in paradise – industry, greenery and false promises

This photo was taken on Saturday 10 September this year. It depicts a path beside the narrowest section of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal to the north of the city of Wolverhampton.

This intensely beautiful space is enveloped with lush riparian vegetation – a fortuitous confluence of infrastructure and nature. Further along its length, it passes through the i54 industrial estate (largely occupied by automotive and aerospace companies) before meeting the M54 motorway.

The canals of Birmingham and the Black Country are the longest lasting remnants of the industrial revolution in this region. They were built in the late 18th century to facilitate the transport of materials and fuel to factories and foundries. A landscape previously occupied by forests, fields and farmland was transformed into a world of furnaces, chimneys and slag heaps, resulting in significant land-based and atmospheric pollution.

Edwin Butler Bayliss, a self-taught artist, carved a niche for himself as the painter of this transformed landscape. Between 1900 and 1945 he worked, following the example of the Impressionists, ‘en plein air’, making sketches on site that were developed further in his painting studio. He was able to gain access to what would have been a secured zone because his father was a managing director of the district’s iron foundry.

Many of his paintings emphasised the toil of those who worked there. The depiction of the workers’ weary stances and dull clothing makes the alienation of their existence palpable, even to a contemporary audience.

The photograph above is one of many taken in areas where Butler Bayliss worked. They will form part of an exhibition, Dear Tomorrow, initiated and curated by photographer and climate activist Sandra Freij. It will open in late November at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, in whose archives many of Butler Bayliss’s paintings are held.

The district of Wednesbury, to the south of the city, featured in much of his oeuvre. The slag heaps and chimneys have gone, the landscape transformed again. It is now a centre of logistics and distribution.

Large sheds of similar height, but varying width and length depending on what happens within, are kept secure with porous fencing at their site’s perimeter. Lines of various deciduous trees are planted in the space between the perimeter fence and the windowless steel-clad façades.

Tree planting comes in many forms, some better than others. Allowing marginal farmland to go wild and let nature take its course seems a sensible approach. Planting trees at the edge of industrial estates feels a touch cynical.

Gerhard Richter addressed this in his notes written on 1 June 1992. He argued, in relation to climate change, that ‘we do nothing but palliate and comfort ourselves. Palliation is always childish: a few green corners in the car parks. Comfort is always a lie; false promises of a beautiful future. That seems to sum us up.’ It certainly does.

David Grandorge is a photographer and senior lecturer in architecture at London Met. His fee for this column has been donated to support the publication of new and diverse voices in the AJ