A Scar History

The Long and Winding Road goes to Birmingham in June as a Youth Panel commission for the Fierce! Festival 2007. The Youth Panel is a Fierce! Festival project supported by Creative Partnerships and Ikon Gallery. Below is the project proposal - A Scar History.


It started with a letter. On 17 May 2004 I was going to post a letter into the river Mersey. My brother went on a ferry across the Mersey and dropped a camera into the river, he told me so in a letter. A letter which arrived the day after he died. The letter I wrote became a parcel as I started to realise I wanted to send him things as well as words. The parcel became a suitcase, the suitcase became a trunk, the trunk became a car. There are too many things, his things that I unpacked when he died. Things he gave to me that I only keep to make me sad. Birthday presents. Christmas presents. Things that represent stories I hadn’t been able to tell him. Birthday presents. Christmas presents I hadn’t been able to give him. Everything until now. Packed in a car.

The Long and Winding Road began on the 17 May 2004 when live artist Michael Pinchbeck started a journey in a graffiti covered car from Nottingham to Liverpool. The car was packed with 365 mementoes wrapped up in brown paper and string. Each item has a registration number – like a car. The project lasts until 17 May 2008 when the artist will drive the car into the River Mersey.

The mementoes in the car are items that belonged to the artist's brother who died in an accident in Liverpool on 17 May 1998. Michael travelled to Liverpool where his brother had been a student to pack a car with his things. The Long and Winding Road is an attempt to take the things back. It is the intention to exhibit the project in galleries and garages between Nottingham and Liverpool on 17 May every year.

The artist has exhibited a film (2005), an installation (2006) and will create a performance to take place on 17 May 2007 at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham as part of Fierce! There is potential to link up with local artists for graffiti workshops and invite gallery visitors to wrap up their own mementoes to pack in the car.

The objects spill from the boot. Log books, photo albums and maps litter the dashboard. Slides beam from the headlights. Visitors are invited one at a time to join the artist in the car for a personal car history. The artist offers passengers a travel sweet before showing the film of The Long and Winding Road and sharing the reason for the journey in a one-on-one performance.

This performance is called The Long and Winding Road – A Scar History. Scars are stories. Stories on your skin. Each of the scars on Michael’s body is linked to the car or to the cause of his brother’s death – falling. By taking passengers on a tour of his scars in the car, Michael uses the physical traces of trauma as a metaphor for the emotional scars that a personal loss leaves behind. He addresses guests via the rear view mirror and tells stories. Sad stories. Happy stories. The story of the project so far. A scar history. A car history.