A trip to Glastonbury Festival is like visiting another country or even stepping into a different world altogether. If you climb to the top of the hills at the southern part of the site after dark, you can appreciate the enormity of it all; the festival's very own city illuminated by glittering lights.
The 900-acre Worthy Farm is transformed for the final weekend of June with preparations already underway to start rebuilding the Pyramid stage. And while Glastonbury is best known for its music, comedy and theatre, the festival is also home to some of the most impressive art installations in the world.
One man, in particular, has been crucial to executing the festival's artistic vision for many years. Artist Joe Rush is the master of otherworldly art. He has been collaborating with the Eavis family since the 1980s through his performing arts collective Mutoid Waste Company, known as the Mutoids. Joe has been key to the Glastonbury ethos, including marvels such as the Unfairground, Trash City and most recently, Glastonbury on Sea.
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"Michael Eavis and Emily and her husband Nick, tend to trust me nowadays," Joe told BristolLive. "They show me great support when I come to them with a crazy idea like building a 60m long seaside pier on dry land or a giant tree made out of car exhaust pipes, belching smoke into the atmosphere. We do obviously have to have discussions about location, crowd control, and all the other millions of organisational issues that come with working on this scale with so many people."
One memory that stood out to Joe over four decades of work was the collective's giant mechanical Phoenix from 2013. "We had built on top of the Pyramid Stage while The Rolling Stones played ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ underneath," he recalled.
This year, Joe is recreating one of the Mutoids' first-ever installations at Worthy Farm called Carhenge, which first debuted at Glastonbury in 1987. He said he was moved to rebuild the sculpture at the festival after the passing of two close friends, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Nick Turner, a saxophone player from Hawkwind who helped build the very first Pyramid Stage.
"These characters and many others have through their own courage and inspiration, created the different building blocks, which have made our creative and caring culture. I decided that the cars in the Henge would all represent these different characters, not all of them famous, who have added to the mix of the alternative culture."
Parts from the first sculpture are long gone so it will be rebuilt using the vintage cars from Cineramageddon, a drive-in cinema field that will not be returning this year. It will be erected in the centre of Williams Green as a dedication to the symbols of counterculture with performances from Kinshasa-based artists Fulu Miziki.
"One of our crew, called Coco, works out in Africa with repurposing waste, this is where she met Fulu Miziki, who build costumes and their instruments from waste. They use the music lifestyle to highlight what is a major problem in Africa. The world is shipping its waste there and expecting them to deal with it, causing pollution illness and destruction of their environment," Joe explained.
In the daytime, Carhenge will be a place where people can rest, eat, drink and enjoy the atmosphere. There will be the chance to make costumes or instruments from waste with Fulu Miziki and dance to a soundtrack by the Notting Hill Carnival team.
After dark, Joe outlined how it will all change under the direction of Ed Warren who has created a light visual scape, helping Carhenge become a magical, strange and changing environment. "Also, the summer solstice falls on the festival this year, so of course, we will be filling the place with druids and sun worshippers," he added.
Glastonbury is wholly individualistic in its programming, which is what makes it the best festival in the world, and truly leans into the idea of 'offering something for everyone'. While it's had to evolve over the years, swelling from a few thousand to nearly a quarter of a million people, Joe believes its core values are still at the heart of the event.
"For me, Glastonbury is a small island of positive energy and creative expression, coupled with social awareness and a really good time. My involvement with Glastonbury Festival has had to evolve in the same way that the festival has had to evolve. The wild punk hippie ethos has had to mutate to create a safe organised structure for so many people."
Glastonbury Festival is on June 21-25 at Worthy Farm. https://www.joerush.com/
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