Carhenge: Joe Rush shows us around Glastonbury’s newest installation

nme.com:

Glastonbury 2023 has welcomed a new installation from artist Joe Rush. Watch him walking and talking us through the ambitious Carhenge area above.Announced last month, the “monumental” new art sculpture is made by underground artist Joe Rush, founder of the Mutoid Waste Company, and the “builder of rock’n’roll environments”.

The artist has had his “mutant world” installations showcased at Glastonbury since 1985 – including the original scaled-down version of Carhenge which was displayed in 1987 – and the iconic mechanical Phoenix atop the Pyramid Stage in 2013.The design — which is named after Stonehenge — is developed out of 24 mutated vintage cars and will be displayed in the middle of the festival.“This is Carhenge 2023, as opposed to Carhenge 1987,” Rush told NME. “We’re basically revisiting the idea which was one of the first things we did when we came to the festival.

What happened was The Mutoid Waste Company was formed and we were trying to get to Stonehenge Free Festival, when we built our first mutated lorry.“We couldn’t get there because the police attacked the hippies going into Stonehenge Free Festival, smashed all their wagons and beat them all up.

So by the time we were ready to go, there was no Stonehenge to go to – so we came here to Glastonbury, and built Stonehenge out of cars.”He continued: “We thought, if they won’t let us go to Stonehenge then we’ll just build Stonehenge ourselves out of cars and we can have our party there.“It’s gone down as part of the history of Glastonbury Festival, and so we decided to revisit it.