Here’s a slideshow of the SuperWindowTable being ‘taken to the people‘ – assembled in the Wellington Pub in the heart of Garston Village.
[Two smartly dressed studenty-types start assembling the table, and they're joined by a local regular in his lesisurewear as he's on his way back from the lavs. He helps out by holding a [...]
To follow on from the last post here’s a few words from the Bauman…
“The lesson which planners could learn from the long chronicle of lofty dreams and abominable disasters which combine to form the history of modern architecture, is that the prime secret of a ‘good city’ is the chance it offers people to take [...]
This print by Phil Disley describes an important theme in Garston. The construction of the A561 “Garston bypass” effectively took the life out of the heart of the village, and contributed to the town’s demise. The route is Liverpool’s main gateway to the south. Traffic that once went through the village high street now bypasses [...]
Here are some Superlambbananas I did for the “go superlambbananas” public art event. Including “SuperLambPyjama”, “Supertimbernana”, “SuperRedBanana”, “Superlambbanana in Pyjamas” and a few Zebras and Tigers and things thrown in.
Meanwhile in Liverpool’s Kensington… (location of one of the other ‘Peoples Pavilions’) there are more abandoned houses. However these abandoned houses happen to be on the main gateway route into Liverpool from the M62. So since thousands of tourists will be driving past them to visit the European Capital of Culture in 2008, they had [...]
Some footage from when the SuperWindowTable was ‘taken to the streets’. This is just a tester/teaser/provisional edit. [Proper edit in the pipeline.]
Luckily my good mates from undergrad Mike and Mark were able to help out, as Mark was up from London for the weekend. Mark used to be a bit [...]
Last night the SuperWindowTable made it’s debut in the Wellington Pub in Garston. The ‘provisional construction’ brought together some important themes in my project [art, tables, pubs, community engagement, beermats]. It was the feature at an “Anything – Special Edition” night organised by Mike Carney. Mike had done some posters and publicity for the event, [...]
This afternoon Alex showed a group of us around the old school building that’s going to be used as the ‘Garston Embassy’ as part of the Biennial’s Peoples’ Pavilions Project. We were joined by local MP Maria Eagle, as well as potential investors from South Liverpool housing association, and other locals who are involved.
The building [...]
For the past two days we’ve been doing a Studio Six / Studio Two joint workshop, with Berlin architect/academic Mathias Heyden. It was about “A collaborative investigation on social and economical, political and cultural implications within designing the built environment”.
Central to Heyden’s discussion were the theories of Joseph Beuys, an artist who was famous for [...]
Looks like Mike has got things covered in Garston while I’m back in Sheffield. He’s kindly put together a poster for friday’s “Anything – Special Edition” night at the Welly, which he’s going to put up around the pub. That’s ‘interdependence’.
On Sunday a thick fog descended on Garston village. So I went and took some photos of it. More here.
Yesterday afternoon, Garston’s bastion of the avant-garde Alex Corina phoned me and kindly invited me to an evening sioree at View Two art gallery on Liverpool’s famous Matthew Street. The ‘independent’ gallery is owned by architect Ken Martin, who’s also the architect working on the Artistic Republic of Garston’s Embassy building. It was a good [...]
Last night I met up with Mike Carney in the Wellington Pub (‘The Welly’) in Garston. Mike’s a Garston-based designer who’s involved with the Artistic Republic of Garston project, working on the Embassy building. Since November he’s been trying to start something positive in Garston, by running a night called “Anything” at the Welly. Described [...]
Two weeks after I started looking at public art in Garston as part of the Interdependence studio, the Architects’ Journal conveniently ran the story as their main feature. The article gives a good overview of the ongoing art projects in the three deprived Liverpool suburbs of Kirkdale, Kensington, and Garston, including the aforementioned “Artistic Republic [...]
This is the story of a unique inter-relation between Sheffield and Garston, with reference to another kind of art:
The trendy Sheffield band “Arctic Monkeys” used one of the abandoned houses in Garston for their latest album cover art (pictured), and a music video.
The interior of the house was painted with psychedelic murals, before the front [...]
This Sunday the “Super Window Table” was taken to the streets. It went to meet the “Super Lamb Banana” in the city centre, as well as gracing the mean streets of Garston Village. It was a kind of guerilla “public art” installation. I was hoping the “street furniture” might provoke a bit of banter with [...]
Tonight I visited Static Gallery for the launch party of “Go Superlambbananas“; Hailed as a “mass participation” event (obviously “participation” is really trendy these days), the project will see 100 scaled-down Super Lamb Bananas painted by local artists and taken to the streets. Anyone can enter a design. I’ve already got a few ideas [...]
Here the “Super Window Table” is shown in context on the streets of Garston, to indicate possible sites for architectural intervention.
Exploring the interdependence/independence relationship of towns like Nowa Huta, Sheffield, and Garston, Super Window Table is an example of four identical components that work interdependently, to form an independent ‘reciprocal frame’ structure. Each component supports, and is supported by each other. Like the ‘housing’ and the ‘industry’, the components are useless on their own, but [...]
Commissioned for the Art Transpennine Exhibition of 1998, Taro Chiezo’s Super Lamb Banana is one of the most instantly recognisable and well loved symbols of the City of Liverpool.
Super Lamb Banana represents Garston and global interdependence, by referencing the port’s history of importing bananas and exporting lambs. (In post-war Britain most of the country’s bananas [...]
