Art review: Forest Pitch, Selkirk

This turns out to be true. But as we are gently careening to Selkirk and the site of what will turn out to be either one of the most notable artworks of 2012 or a damp squib, I can’t fault him on his honesty.

Coulthard is “probably distantly related” to that other Coulthard of motor racing fame, he says. Clearly they may share genes but not skill sets. This Coulthard, affable, modest and quietly spoken, is no household name, but the 30-year-old Edinburgh College of Art graduate will find himself in the public eye this year when Forest Pitch, his £460,000 public art project for the Cultural Olympiad’s Artists Taking the Lead programme, is unveiled in July.

Forest Pitch is “a sculpture that is growing all the time, a garden, and maybe a nature reserve”, but also just what it says – a football pitch hidden in a monotonous patch of commercial spruce plantation on the Buccleuch Estate at Clarilawmuir by Selkirk.

On 21 July, two amateur games – one for men, one for women – will be held on the site. Coulthard’s players, in a metaphor for the changing nature of nationhood, will be new Scots, those who have acquired British citizenship in the past ten years or currently have exceptional leave to remain. “I want the teams to illustrate the kind of people who live in modern Scotland and the choices they have made. One of the aims of Artists Taking the Lead is to welcome people, to inspire young people and I think this would be an ideal way to do that.”

We arrive on site on a day of high winds and scattered snowfall. The pitch will be seeded in the spring, but already on a muddy field you get some sense of the surprise that Coulthard is trying to create amongst the dull march of conifers.

So far some 600 spruce have been harvested. The wood will be used to create changing rooms designed by the team at Gareth Hoskins Architects, which will remain as a shelter for future visitors to the site. One hundred and ninety-four tonnes of tree stumps have been uprooted and uplifted for recycling. On the access road into the site we pass some mounds of earth; this is 800 tonnes of topsoil from Gala Fairydean FC, who have installed an all-weather surface. After the games, the perimeter will be marked by planting some native species and nature will then be left to take its course.

Forest Pitch was selected by an independent panel in a process managed by the then Scottish Arts Council in October 2009. Coulthard’s proposal was selected from more than 90 Scottish entries including some far more established names, and he admits he was really surprised to be selected. “It’s an immense privilege, and I keep reminding myself how lucky I am,” he says. For the first time the artist, who helped found Edinburgh’s Embassy Gallery in 2003 and has work in the collection of Paisley Museum, can concentrate full time on his work.

The decision probably looks quite different in the age of austerity, but back then it may have seemed to promise a different kind of Olympic dream, something rural and local and amateur with a tiny ecological footprint, amidst the crazed construction and corporate branding. Inspired in part by Coulthard’s memories of playing football as an RAF child, who moved with his father’s postings between rural Germany, Kinloss and Leuchars, it is also strongly reminiscent of abandoned pitches like Third Lanark’s Cathkin Park.

Locally, at least at a political level, initial hesitancy has been overcome by recognition that Forest Pitch is bringing a bit of money and a chunk of attention to an area not noted for contemporary art. Already local contractors have been engaged, there is a nationwide school competition to design the football strips, and plans for a textile project with three local primary schools. The community will be involved as audience, volunteers and guides.

Perceptually, though, it may still be an issue. After we finish our interview, Coulthard and I are both asked to speak to the BBC and the reporter’s emphasis is firmly on the funding. At the moment, Forest Pitch remains one of the more expensive art projects to be completed in recent years in Scotland, though it will be dwarfed by the estimated £3 million fundraising target for the Star of Caledonia at Gretna.

Coulthard stresses the money is not taxpayers’ money but National Lottery cash, already earmarked for an art project, and that it is bringing attention and activity to the Borders. “One of the plans was to try to take it beyond Edinburgh or Glasgow,” he says.

How does he respond to the obvious suggestion that £460,000 is a lot of money to spend on a game of football. “The games are just one aspect of it. For health and safety reasons we do need to limit the amount of people who can watch,” he says. “But people will be able to access the site for years after.”

The estate estimates that Forest Pitch will have an afterlife of about 60 years. At first it will be hidden. Then, when the next harvest takes place in 20 years’ time, it will be a patch of indigenous landscape in a barren hillside of tree stumps. “At the moment not much can survive in there,” says Coulthard, nodding toward the spruces. “I’m hoping that opening up a corridor like this will change all that, make it more diverse.”

In fact, it’s another kind of diversity that is dominating his conversations. “A lot of people have said to me, ‘why are you letting a bunch of foreigners play?’ ”

How does he answer these questions? “I explain the idea behind the matches, about welcoming new citizens. These are all things I want to be discussed and things that should be discussed, particularly as we are at a point at which we have an SNP government and an independence vote is on the way. It’s important to think about. If we were to become an independent country, what kind of country would we be?”

As the snow sets in, it’s time to retreat. In 2012, Craig Coulthard has everything to play for. «