‘Benches’, Katie Walker
We devised the public art strategy and managed the commissions for a series of public seating for the re-developed shopping centres in Leatherhead and St Albans.
We commissioned Katie Walker, a leading Royal College of Art design graduate who responded to the use of both sites with functional sculptural pieces. Guided by her belief that: ‘Timber is our primary natural renewable resource and the most ecologically sound solution is to design with longevity in mind’, Walker designed a new series of oak and steel seating.
The seating is comfortable, robust, easy to clean and maintain. The curved forms subtly evoke the street patterns, while the use of oak reflects the timber framed buildings, some dating back to when St Albans was an important place of pilgrimage and part of England’s pilgrimage network. Katie Walker’s public seating are contemporary classics which stand the test of time.
We commissioned ‘Benches’ in 2000 and 2002 on behalf of Allied London.
‘Capital Movement’, Shiraz Bayjoo
‘Capital Movement’ encouraged homeless artists on the Providence Row art programme to explore the underlying factors that drive them as artists and individuals. London’s homeless community is perhaps the capital’s most fluid, interacting with communities and institutions, often at polar ends of the social spectrum. This project explored the influences that fuel their artistic practice. The people, the places and the events that shaped their opinions and experiences, became the focus.
Many of the participants worked within traditional mediums such as drawing and painting, combining them with contemporary concepts such as installation. This project encouraged them to abandon the safety net of their practices, in an attempt to understand what drives their subject and interest as artists. Using photography as the instrument for an outsider eye, resulted in a series of photographs, considered and reflective of both the artist and the art that they make.
‘Capital Movement’ was commissioned by HS Projects and funded by the Insight Community Arts Programme (2002 – 2015).
The project ran from July to December 2007.
‘Building London’, Jim Grant
London is full of fantastic buildings originally designed for many purposes; some to mark a specific event such as Monument for the Great Fire of London, others, such as Tate Britain, were designed to exhibit a national collection, and others, such as Tate Modern, whose original purpose (power station) had become redundant, replaced by a totally new and unforeseen function (Art Gallery/Museum).
The aim of this project was to work with a number of children from Shacklewell Primary School in Dalston, Hackney to produce photographic images that represent their developing ideas on how buildings in London may mean different things to different people.
The project was led by the school’s then Head of Art, Jim Grant. The children worked with digital cameras and photographic manipulation software to explore an idea of architecture that Architectural Historian Aoife Mac Namara explains: ‘How buildings mean what they do to different people, at different times and different contexts has as much to do with the way they are used and encountered by their publics, as it has to do with the original design of the architect’.
In essence the children created images of buildings or parts of buildings in ways that indicate what a building may ‘stand for’ or ‘function as’ is not fixed by the architect but is forever changing in relation to those who use or encounter the material form.
Their interests, such as in sliding down the slope in the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, looking from the windows on a bus, using the lifts in St Pancras Station and talking to those who work within some of the buildings are explored and captured within the images they selected for this exhibition.
‘Building London’ was commissioned by HS Projects and funded by the Insight Community Arts Programme (2002 – 2015).
The project ran from April to September 2009.