13. ALL–AT–ONCENESS

‘Horizon Line’ 1986

‘Found Line’ (EW) 2003

I wanted to see how far I could stretch it before it broke.

– Barnett Newman, 1965

Suddenly one realizes that the sensation is not one of space or an object in space. It has nothing to do with space and its manipulations. The sensation is the sensation of time – and all other multiple feelings vanish like the outside landscape.

– Barnett Newman, 1949

The subject matter of art is not objects, but configured vision. What counts is the imperative of seeing, not the objects that happen to be seen. … Totality enables us to see any given part of our experiences as a whole.

– Carl Einstein, 1914

LINK: **2004–2006 Stourport Canal Basins Masterplan** (as pro/POSIT)

On the 27th October 1768, John Fennyhouse Green was assisting John Dadford in setting out a culvert at Broadwaters when John Baker, the Clerk of Works, directed Green to “go down to the Stour’s Mouth and observe where the Canal might be brought to the Severn.” In his Day Book for 1 November 1768, Green records his visit to “Mr Price’s at Stour’s Mouth” (now the Angel Inn) and to assess the potential of the immediate landscape as the location for the inland port, “If canal is bro’t above… If Bason is made there…” He was looking for a piece of land that was both broad enough to accommodate what is now the Clock Basin and which sat “high enough out of flood’s way.” John Acton, the local Church Warden at Lower Mitton, owned just such a field – a stubble field, measuring something over 5 acres (20,000 m2) and lying high enough above Mr Roberts’ meadow that ran along the River Severn.

On Wednesday 2 November, Green met with Brindley and Sir Edward Littleton, Chairman of the Canal Company, at Acton’s stubble field to discuss his observations. The outcome of this meeting was that “Mr Brindley…fixed on going thro’ Mr Acton’s Stubble field above Mr Price’s House for making of a Bason and building warehouses et on it” and ordered that “the Setting out of the Canal and new Water course of 17th October be altered.”