Our Space public art project in partnership with Willingdon Community School
Friday, 19 October 2007
Red Balloons
To give the visitors to the exhibition an idea of the actual scale of the stucture, I drew the footprint of the Gabion wall on the paving of the courtyard. Tom Bedford (our stuctural engineer) suggested that we use balloons to indicate the height of the pavilion, so we did.
My most recent projects have involved working with communities to develop sculptures for public spaces. Information is gathered from groups of individuals connected by location, interests or other factors. The collected information is used to model the structural geometry of the sculptures. The work is from the place, for the place.
The idea behind the Our Space project is of community. What do we mean when we talk about our community? Geography, people, place and common interests, but also more importantly, it refers to a common ‘all’ made up of individuals. Our Space aims to involve ‘all’ of the school community in its process and to represent this community in the resulting artworks.
The resulting artwork is the Our Space Pavilion. It is a round steel structure measuring approximately 5 meters in diameter by 2.8 meters high. The canopy is made up of 15 inverted spun steel round dishes, each dish corresponds with the height and arm span of an individual representative of the Willingdon school community. The smaller lower dishes represent the younger shorter members whilst the larger higher dishes represent the older taller members. The pavilion is a space to be inhabited; it can be a space for quiet contemplation, a social meeting space, or even a venue for a small performance. Sounds will resonate downward from the dishes, reflecting what is going on below and amplifying wind and rain noise. The Our Space Pavilion is due for completion in March 2008.
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