Level 5 HND in Fine Art Live Brief: Leigh to Ellenbrook Guided Busway Scheme (1st Year)

As a group we were asked to create pieces of site specific public artwork that would be sited along a new guided busway that would run between Leigh and Ellenbrook. This project is a fantastic opportunity for us to have a shot at getting our own work out there into the public eye. The areas that we our designing sculptures for are Tyldesley interchange and the wooded area in Higher Fold.

For my starting point for this project I began looking into site specific & public artwork to familiarise myself with the kinds of materials used within them and to get a feel for the kind of scale that site specific artwork is done in. Even though scale is not a constant throughout different site specific sculptures, after looking at a few examples it's obvious to me that the scale needs to be big and attention grabbing, except for one example that I found which was underwater sculptures which I don't think were placed there with the idea of grabbing people's attention.



I also looked at playgrounds as one of the potential locations that our work would be sited in would most likely be visited by children and families walking through the area. If the playground route were to be taken then I would also have to take into consideration health and safety and designing something that could hold its own weight and potentially the weight of others climbing on it.

http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/resources/practicaladvice/adviceartists/insurance.php

This website has some useful information regarding public liability insurance, which is something that would be needed if the piece of work being sited was designed with the intent of being something children could climb and play on, however the insurance is not specifically just for this kind of work and could be required regardless of what is sited on the busway.



As Tyldesley was a mining community, this was something that we were originally asked to try and pull into our work and base what we come up with around the theme of mining. Whilst this makes designing a piece of artwork for the busway easier as it provides guidance for what is expected after looking at existing sculptures inspired by mining I can't see a way to pull this theme into the work and make it our own and it is just another restriction that's been put in place. Also mining isn't part of the current culture of Tyldesley and a piece of work based on this may very well speak to the older generations in the community it isn't necessarily going to be appreciated by younger and future generations as it isn't a part of their lives.

Despite not personally backing the theme of mining totally I still wanted to explore it and see if there was a way to modernise it but not create something that was so contemporary that the inspiration from mining is completely lost, otherwise it would be pointless to do so. I looked at the tools and equipment related to mining and started drawing and taking shapes from them.

I began to play around with a few simple designs recalling to the design process I had followed on the level 3 course by taking a shape and applying it to a 3 dimensional form and manipulating the shape. 

One such design is this one pictured above, the idea came from the pickaxe originally and I just took the rectangular shape and started to manipulate and form it around the cone.

I always played around with a couple of designs for a potential seating area. On the left is what would be a bench, and on the right a stand alone chair. Both were designed taking elements from a pickaxe and a mineral wagon. These designs are pretty basic for a piece of public art but could possibly be enhanced if a pattern or design was added onto them to making them more visually interesting.

 For this design I called back to the idea of the playground and whilst I was designing this I stuck to using basic shapes and imagined it as something for children to climb on and through the 3 shapes. I also added in the shape of the pickaxe blade trying to incorporate the mining theme into it, but that single shape was the extent of it.

I took my final design and using a clay started to construct a small maquette, after I had the basic rectangular shape and the other shapes cut out I decided to change my design and I added in the grooves. I envisioned this piece as quite large made of concrete or stone and within the grooves manipulating the piece so that moss would specifically grow within them.

Chloe went to visit a resident and came back to us lot and passed on information that she had gathered. One thing in particular was the quote 'Deeds Not Words', the motto of Tyldesley high school originally 'Facta Non Verba'. I came up with a design implementing the motto into a map of Tyldesley. Using the maps app on my phone I copied the shape of the streets centering around where the map was labelled 'Tyldesley' and linked the streets with the motto. I want to take this design and combine it with my maquette so that the grooves I add will have a significant meaning.