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R owntree Haulage is at the heart of the English road
Page 39
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transport industry. Near to its yard in the rural idyll of Nuneaton, Warwickshire is a farm field said to be the dead centre of England. Now this eight-truck general haulier has become the centre of attention for a quite different reason. One of its curtainsiders has become the first mobile artwork to receive public funding from West Midlands Arts through its Creative Ambition Fund, to the tune of 14,5cia The project was started last June and launched at a gallery exhibition at Stratford in November. Artist Alisha Miller secured a further .t2,000 sponsorship from West Bromwich-based truck dealer Keltruck (which features in a video accompanying the project), L20 o from Nuneaton-based freight forwarder Greyhound Transport and free curtains and fittings from Dutch curtain-maker Roland Gentilt—belying the notion that the haulage industry is full of philistines.
Enthusiast
Not only that, but the contact with Rowntree came through one of the sponsors. "Selina Carter, who runs Greyhound Transport, put me in touch with Steve Rowntree, the owner of Rowntree Haulage," says Miller, who is an avowed trucking enthusiast as well as an accomplished artist.
The artwork features line drawings on both sides of the curtainsider. One side depicts four of the company's drivers Chris Phillips, Dave Beale, Roger Rowntree (brother of Steve) and Alan Ball. The other side features an expansive landscape of the company's rented site, which is set within a farm. "I am very interested in the concept of 'artist meets trucker'," explains Miller. "I wanted to see what truckers thought of art. The word 'landscape kept cropping up and when I did a few trips with the drivers, I found that travelling the country and seeing the landscape was what drivers enjoyed.
"I really needed the artwork to be a recognisable piece of art and I wanted it to be a drawing. A truck is a fantastic space to put artwork on." Rowntree delivers breezeblocks for the building trade so the landscape includes sets of blocks labelled with different types of work to detail "the need the world has for lorries", as Miller puts it.
Technically, the work was painstaking. Miller sent computer-created images to a signmaker. They drew it on paper to the same dimensions as the trailer. I then traced the drawings onto the curtain with pencil and completed the images with vinyl lines, which had to be stuck on. It took me 76 hours to stick on the landscape and two weeks to complete the images of the drivers on the other side."
She says that the exhibition, called Transit Art 2, launched the project last November and was incredibly exciting. Miller ran a similar exhibition three years previously, working with another operator. "It was good to get truck drivers into an art gallery. I am keen to get more companies doing this, rather than just putting ads on trucks, because it will lift spirits on the motorway."
The vinyl is reflective so the finished drawings look most startling at night when caught in headlights.