Chit Chat

by Ruth Barker, 22 Feb 2010

Hello,

pretty busy over the last while, not least as I’ve been gearing up to start a Leverhulme-funded residency (part time, so as to leave room for PAR+RS) at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Artefact Studies at Newcastle University. There’s a bit of info here on the Intersections website. I’ll keep you up to date with that as it progresses, but for now it’s enough to say that I start officially in March, and that I’ll be down in Newcastle (on and off) for the following 10 months. Exciting!

Conversation has been flavouring the zeitgeist lately, as I’ve been chatting to Justin Carter and Neil McGuire at Glasgow School of Art about a cross-departmental St. George’s Cross Underpass project, and attending a few conversations regarding the tentatively proposed ‘Art Park’ in Bellahouston Park.

The latter is at very early stages of development, so it would be wrong to talk too much about it, other than to say that I hope that those co-ordinating the project continue to involve the wider community in the ongoing discussion.

The former on the other hand is almost at final proposal stage, so I don’t mind shedding a little light on how the conversations have been developing.

In 2009, Justin and Neil from GSA were contacted by the fantastic Katie Duffy of Glasgow City Council, to suggest that GSA students might be interested in an opportunity to propose a new work for the Saint George’s Cross pedestrian underpass in the West End of the city. There could be no guarantee that the work would be implemented, but it would be a great chance for students to develop some ideas for a difficult location, and to ‘pitch’ a new site specific project to the Council.

Of course the Artschool jumped at the opportunity to involve the students in such a unique professional practice experience, and Justin (from the Sculpture and Environmental Art department) and Neil (from Visual Communications) took the even more unusual decision to open up the process to all the departments across the schools of Fine Art, Design, and Architecture. As I’m no stranger to pedestrian underpasses and their environs (for my sins, check here ) I was asked to talk to the students at the start of the project – discussing how my own ideas had evolved as well as talking more broadly about contemporary public art practice. There were a lot of people at the talk, and I that time no-one knew really how the Saint George’s Cross underpass project might develop, or who might be involved. Various ideas were suggested – from mass collaboration, to rigorous competition, to a scrupulous division of labour. It was an exciting time, as it felt like a huge range of possibilities were open for discussion.

By the time I returned to the school a week or so ago to discover how things were progressing, a small core group had emerged and were working collaborativey towards a shared proposal. So that at a meeting set-up this month to allow the students to present their work so far, I found 5 (I think? Hope I haven’t mis-remembered) dedicated students from across the departments working closely together to come up with a final design. It was a real privilage to hear the group talk frankly about how they’d found the project by turns inspiring and infuriating, and to see how their ideas had evolved into a proposal that struck me as thoughtful, innovative, and ambitious.

When I met with the students on Feb 11th, there was still some work to be done on finalising their proposal, but the bare bones of it were certainly there. In essence, they’re hoping to plant a garden in the area surrounding the entrance to the underpass, and to contrast that with an installed aspect in the tunnel itself. The group had worked hard to negotiate a fearsomely limited budget and timescale, and I hope that Glasgow City Council appreciates the sincerity and the energy with which the brief has been tackled.

Once the students have made their proposal to the Council, and once they’ve heard whether or not it’s been accepted (I’ve got my fingers crossed for you guys!), I’ll be approaching them to see how we can best cover the work here on PAR+RS. It’s important to say at this point that I think the process they’ve gone through already has been a fascinating one – whether they are able to move onto the next stage of realisation or not. But in the meantime, let me know if there’s anything in particular you want to hear about the process so far. Perhaps we can draw up a list of questions for me to put to the group in an interview?

More later,
R