Happen - Lines of Sight
Happen - Mid Bedfordshire
In partnership with Mid Bedfordshire District Council, HAPPEN has assisted with the delivery of a major public art element for the Council's new offices in Chicksands, Bedfordshire.
HAPPEN was delighted to advise Mid Beds District Council (MBDC) on commissioning an exciting 3D wall-based artwork for its new headquarters at Chicksands, Bedfordshire. The artwork, entitled "Lines of Sight", was created by highly regarded artist Catherine Baker, in collaboration with local children and MBDC staff. The £10,000 cost of the project was allocated from the construction budget as one of the planning conditions for the building, not from council tax revenues.
Catherine Baker lives in Bedford and is one of the county’s leading artists. She trained at Central St Martin's College of Art & Design in Painting and completed an MA Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art. She is currently a senior lecturer at Norwich School of Art and Design and has a longstanding association with the University of Luton. Catherine’s work has been exhibited by galleries in Melbourne, Brussels, Cambridge and Llandudno, amongst others, and her work also features in private collections worldwide. Awarded a research and development grant by the Arts Council in 2005, Catherine was also selected for inclusion in the prestigious Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005/06.
Catherine’s piece for Mid Beds is made up of 27 square panels, each measuring approximately 60cm. There is scope for these panels to be rearranged in a variety of different configurations thus creating an artwork which is constantly changing. The images themselves were created from tracking the eye movements that are made when looking at drawings or photographs. In this instance, Catherine recorded how project participants relate to photographs taken during the construction of the Chicksands building.
Workshops with local schools and Mid Beds staff took place in March 2006 and involved two local artists from HAPPEN’s Artist Development Programme (ADP). The artists in question, Gemma Hutton and Sonia Almeida, assisted Catherine during sessions with young people from Samuel Whitbread Upper School (Shefford), Campton Lower School (Campton), and Robert Bloomfield Middleschool (Shefford).
The final artwork was completed on time and can be seen at Mid Beds new offices, Priory House, Chicksands from August 2006, together with an exhibition about the creation of the work.
Start date: 1 February 2006
End date: 1 August 2006
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Art forms
- Visual & applied arts
Themes
- Environment
Interventions
- New ways of working with LAs
Target groups
- Local authority staff
Venue
- Mid Bedfordshire