‘Rising’, Nigel Ellis
For ‘Rising’, a site spefic public art commission for Prologis Park, Bromley by Bow, we acted as advisors to artist Nigel Ellis. We helped with negotiations with the commissioner, devised the project brief and budget, drew up the contract and established a structure and timeline to effectively manage the commission. Working with Ellis, we provided general project support from concept design to project completion, ensuring the commission was delivered seamlessly.
‘’…’Rising’ was made on commission by architects for a new development on the site next to the old Gas Museum building in Bromley By Bow, from where the whole of east London was once supplied. Like some others of my sculptures its form is therefore something of a celebration of disappearing industrial achievement. However, ‘Rising’ relates primarily to the balance and weight of the body as experienced from inside. The straight ‘cuts’ give a plumb line – like a sense of vertical sheerness, and there is an underlying sense of both responding to and lifting against gravity, with the topmost forms lifted out of each other, while lower forms are slightly compressed. It is an aspirational, optimistic sculpture which presents interesting views all round, while having two particularly strong profiles. …” (Nigel Ellis).
‘Rising’, 2003 was a site specific commission for Prologis Park, Bromley by Bow.
Arts & Business New Partners Award
HS Projects received funds from the Arts & Business New Partners initiative to develop an ambitious series of workshops with lead artists Zatorski + Zatorski for the employees of Insight Investment.
Participating staff were encouraged to experiment with all sorts of visual language, from photography, to drawing, video, portraiture, text and a ‘happening’ at the end of the last workshop, offering them a wide spectrum of creative possibilities. Each workshop was carefully structured to feed into the next and so create a momentum and a sense of anticipation.
The theme of the project was ‘a journey’ and participants were tasked with taking photographs and experimenting with image-making using a variety of media to represent a journey, real or metaphorical. They explored visual language and creative thinking. A total of about 2,000 photographs, drawings and text pieces were produced during the project. The participants also created an artist’s book and a number of short video films which linked ordinary objects to extraordinary histories.
‘Flight Structure’, Sandra Blow
In 1995 we commissioned ‘Flight Structure’, an illuminated glass screen by Sandra Blow which was installed in Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport by the airside entrance. Blow styled the work to convey the transition from security to flight.
Consideration was given by Blow for the screen to combine harmoniously with its surroundings. The steel bands that were part of the interior were used to flow in a free form across the screen while the verticals met the lines of the ceiling in the departure lounge. The shape and dimensions of ‘Flight Structure’ were determined by the gateway to airside which passengers had to pass through. These architectural references are typical of Blow’s work especially since her collaboration with the architect Eric Defty in the 1970’s, after which her work often included geometric shapes and was further underpinned through her increasing use of square canvasses.
According to the artist herself: ‘Flight Structure is balanced to give the sense of a secure enclosure, whilst the luminous, coloured glass panels lift off into animation and gaiety, rising above the purposefulness of the lounge, and from there, with colours running across the top, taking off into flight.’
This commission being Blow’s only experimentation with glass, forms an important part of the artist’s body of work.
We commissioned ‘Flight Structure’ in 1995 on behalf of Heathrow Terminal 3 as part of the BAA Art Programme. In 2013 we re-located the work to Heathow’s head office in the Compass Centre.