Come On Swindon!

A piece of artwork to showcase Swindon Town's appearance at Wembley on Sunday is being produced right now on Swindon's Whalebridge roundabout.

Mark Amis started off this morning drawing out from the plan produced by BBC Wiltshire after Graham Mack (the station's breakfast show presenter) wondered whether we should paint the town red for the big match.

Bite-Sized building Update

Here's a view taken today from the roof of Swindon railway station, the Signal Point office building, of the forecourt works below.

Looks like a giant game of Tetris!

Off to photograph another railway station tomorrow, the chocolate-box delight of St Pancras International.

Images of Swindon and St Pancras arriving soon!

Black & White Beauty

Click the image for a closer look.

This image was taken a few weeks ago, just developed and scanned ; from loading the film, right through to darkroom development and scanning, there's nothing quite like real photographic film!

AOP Landscapes Competition : Boundaries

The southern-most limit of Swindon's development, marked by the garden-style wooden fence at Wichelstowe. Click on the image for a closer look.

On a map, plan, or diagram, the border of properties, jurisdictions, and contracts are defined with confident lines, filled with certainty.

Capturing these lines, the exact point where one thing ends and another begins, through photographs, creates a tension and uncertainty.

Blackhorse Way runs out of road and dissolves into the fields of Wichelstowe. Click on the image for a closer look.

Taken at the current northern and southern limits of development in Swindon, these images show the purgatory where boundaries exist within the landscape, contrasting with our expectations and plans.

More images from this project can be seen on Flickr, click here.

Advertising Applications : Artsite Campaign

The dramatic lighting from the National Trust building does most of the work for us! Click on the image for a closer look. 

Art and access to art are not 'added extras' in life and should have the same importance placed upon them as essential services for a society.

So how do you change the perception of art as an 'added extra' and for a niche of people?

In a localised advertising campaign that uses the locations as much as the artwork themselves to challenge preconceptions and ask questions, that's how!

As part of the Advertising Applications unit fellow student Ed Howell and I took an advertising campaign for the Artsite Post Modern Gallery from conception through to execution, and all points in between.

The mixture of light and textures at Wharf Green suits The Green Man sculpture. Click on the image for a closer look.

Initial ideas highlighted the theme of hidden art in Swindon, that locally much goes on, but above the surface some people may struggle to realise the scale and depth of activities.

In short, we wanted to show how art in Swindon is on your doorstep - by putting it there.

For the full set of images from the campaign, click on the link to the right, or here..

Links

Artsite Post Modern Gallery : http://artsite.ltd.uk/

Ed Howell : http://edwardhowellphotography.wordpress.com/

Heathrow's Hidden High-Flying Artwork

I took the time last week to find the carefully hidden public artwork at London Heathrow's Terminal 5.

Between the multi-storey carpark and terminal building are a set of interconnected courtyards. Peaceful public spaces, planted with Plane Trees and up lighters, they make a nice contrast to the mass of passengers in the terminal building. At either end of the courtyards there are complimenting pieces of artwork, two walls, each with a semicircle of three letter airport codes of places served by flights from Terminal 5.

The North end wall was the most impressive (though it does not light up like it's southern neighbour), the black marble gave a great reflection in the afternoon light of the terminal building.

Richard Rogers-designed terminal has many design elements from an earlier building of his, the Millennium Dome. I took some film pictures of these and of the vast public space inside. More of that to come when they're developed!

If you've a little time at Terminal 5, take a walk outside to the quiet courtyards, you'll be impressed by this public airport art.

Curves, Vertigo & Wind Chill (And Wembley)

The shape of the paving, starting to resemble the drawings in the site office, as seen from 12-storeys up (click on the images for a closer look).

Looking over a wall isn't normally encouraged, especially so when the wall has a 12-storey drop over the other side of it!

Today saw a second visit to the roof of Swindon Railway Station's Signal Point building, continuing the Swindon Rail Station project.

Graham and Dan from Britannia (the contractor for the work) also came up for a look. Just before, in the site office, they showed the highly-detailed plan for the paving on the forecourt. Areas of different paving are separated by intersecting, curved lines (inspired by the gradual curved map lines of the Great Western Railway).

At ground level, the paving, curves and yet-to-be-filled plots of ground looks like a headache-inducing jigsaw puzzle, but through a handheld device (it was yellow and looked like one of those electronic signing devices when a parcel's delivered), the exact places are plotted and followed to the designer's letter.

Zooming in, the smooth curves and shapes of the design can be seen and understood, giving a flavour of what the finished forecourt will look like (click on the image for a closer look).

From the roof, seeing the initial area of paving being worked on gave a great sense of what the finished work will look like and the style of the whole works.

We're planning to do weekly roof-top visits to give a better step-by-step sense of the work from this great bird's eye view.

And finally...

The County Ground, recovering after last night's pitch invasion and win, next stop Wembley, now, wouldn't that be something to photograph...! (Click on the image for a closer look)