Features
Glastonbury-On-Sea: Festival Gets Victorian Pier And Sea Front
Joe Rush – Drawing of the Pier
By Joe Rush
Visitors of Glastonbury 2019 will be able to walk along a full-fledged pier, which includes all the attractions one would expect on a UK pier as well as some one wouldn’t expect at all.
Victorian pleasure piers are famous landmarks to be found all along the UK’s coast. In 2019, London artist Joe Rush is going to build a pier on the site of the UK’s most popular festival – far from any kind of water, though that may change during Glastonbury, which has been flooded by rain in the past.
Rush has been creating sculptures and art installations at Glastonbury for many years, after meeting festival founder Michael Eavis for the first time in 1985. Two years later, he built a Stonehenge replica made out of cars on site.
Amelia Troubridge – Joe Rush
Among the giant ants of his latest exhibition
“I’ve always liked to work on a large-scale. When I was very young I saw a sculpture that somebody had made from a Volkswagen Käfer, and made it into a spider. I was so impressed by the scale of it,” he told Pollstar.
Rush just unveiled his latest show in London, March 22, a real train being eaten by giant ants. Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis spoke at the show’s opening, where he also revealed news of the pier.
Since 2002/2003, Rush has been working with the festival fairly regularly. One of his most famous sculptures is the Phoenix that towered above the main Pyramid stage when the Rolling Stones played Glastonbury in 2013. Rush is also the man behind Glasto’s Cineramageddon, which opened at the 2017 edition, and features all kinds of fantastic vehicles in which visitors can take a seat to enjoy a movie.
Jean-Marie Sztalryd – Cineramageddon at Glastonbury
Moviegoers sit in unconventional vehicles designed by Joe Rush
The Pier is most definitely the biggest project Rush has ever realized at Glastonbury. “It’s absolutely massive. It’s 60 meters long, it weighs 160 tons. It’s a proper pier. It’s got 1,400 planks to make the deck. I’m also having to find all the things that happen on the pier including the Punch and Judy show, the fortune tellers and pinball tables.”
One part of the pier is called Automaton, which consists of automated robots and creatures and mechanical machines, and even a robot band that’s going to be playing.
“And it’s not just a pier, it’s also sea front. It’s called Glastonbury-on-Sea, so we’re actually building a sea front and a pier,” Rush explained.
– Glastonbury on Sea
A new attraction awaits visitors of Glastonbury 2019