Portslade, Brighton & Hove
Victoria Road Housing, Forecast
Year
2023
Client
Brighton & Hove City Council
Services
Commission Management
Locations
Victoria Road, Portslade
Brighton & Hove
A site-specific permanent commission
We were appointed by Brighton & Hove City Council to commission an artist/s for a new artwork. The permanent artwork as part of the Victoria Road Housing Scheme, is for the benefit of residents and users of the adjacent Portslade Town Hall.
The Victoria Road Housing Scheme comprises 42 highly sustainable council homes and is being delivered under the council’s New Homes for Neighbourhoods Programme.
“At a moment when care is more urgent than ever how do we weave it into our daily lives? How can we connect to our surroundings in more meaningful ways? ”
Sited in close proximity to what was formerly Ronuk Hall and Welfare Institute Ecologies of Care: Time Flies but the Shine Lasts takes its lead from the wellbeing ethos of the Ronuk polish factory and the legacy of care that continues in the building’s current incarnation as Portslade Town Hall. ‘Time Flies but the Shine Lasts’ was one of many advertising ‘proverbs’ used by the company and serves here as a reminder or provocation that while time is fleeting and our lives may feel chaotic and overloaded, we can individually and collectively make positive contributions to the ecologies of which we are a part that will reverberate and resonate with others.
Ecologies of Care: Time Flies but the Shine Lasts will invite artists and creative practitioners to interrogate this unique site and make proposals for innovative ways to reimagine the landscape of the surrounding housing development and encourage residents and users of Portslade Town Hall of all ages to spend time in the surroundings, and find equal moments of solace, joy and connectivity.
“How can creativity promote care and how can we tune into imagination, our surroundings and the natural world in order to imagine better futures for ourselves and others?”
The commission, Forecast
Brighton & Hove City Council held an open call for an artist for this development. The panel was open to proposals in any medium but was looking for an innovative solution which will augment the landscaping or public realm with a creative artistic input which responds to the curatorial concept. Three shortlisted artists presented to the selection panel comprising representatives from the council, developer, a councillor, and an artist / local resident.
Artist Felicity Hammond (http://www.felicityhammond.com/) and architect Mat Barns of CAN (https://can-site.co.uk/about) were appointed.
‘The artwork, Forecast, is a cluster of three organic forms appearing as weathered sections of brickwork, washed up and castaway by the sea. The forms are made from cement mixed with an aggregate of waste bricks leftover from the construction of the new housing. Sited in the central civic space of the development, fragments of brick are revealed on the polished surface of the sculptures, mimicking the way that the tide erodes and smoothes industrial materials. The history of the site and its coastal location are embedded in the processes used to make the artwork, which references the local former brickfield and the polishing company that once occupied the adjacent town hall.
Holding the polished brick forms in place are a series of steel hoops, which at once blend into the aesthetic of municipal design yet also stand out, like a warning or a marker. The painted steel mimics the change in texture on the concrete forms, suggesting a rising tidal line; a hint at the challenges faced by coastal towns. Through this gesture, Forecast responds to the very nature of permanence in relation to public art, asking its audience not only to consider the material histories related to the site, but also its future form.’
Text courtesy of CAN.
For more information on the housing scheme see here