Car Park Life

Car parks: commonplace urban landscapes, little-explored and rarely featured in art and music, yet they shape the aesthetics of our towns and cities. Hotspots for crime, rage and sexual deviancy; a blind spot in which activities go unnoticed. Skateboarding, car stunts, drug dealing, dogging, murder.

Gareth E. Rees believes that the retail car park has as much mystery, magic and terror as any mountain, meadow or wood. He set out to prove it by walking the car parks of Britain, journeying across the country from Plymouth to Edinburgh, much to the horror of his family, friends – and, most of all – himself. He finds Sir Francis Drake outside B&Q, standing stones in a retail park, and a dead body beside Sainsbury’s.

In his darkly satirical work of non-fiction, available on the night of his talk, Gareth E. Rees presents a troubling vision of Brexit Britain through a common space we know far less about than we think.

Gareth E. Rees is the founder and editor of the website Unofficial Britain, and author of Marshland (Influx Press, 2013).