Monuments and Landmarks

Monuments and Landmarks

Leeds City Museum
Old Mining Building, Leeds
b-side festival, Portland, Dorset

Garry Barker Monument for a future past, Pen, ink, acrylic and watercolour, 2015

Modernism is its own monument. Walking through cities such as Leeds everyday encounters with modernist blocks of flats are constant reminders of our utopian monuments to futures never realised and now past.

John Carroll
Boundary in my head, Charcoal and pastel on paper, 2015

A series of tabletop drawings which explore the idea of reimagining historical monuments.

Anwyl Cooper-Willis
The Beauties of Stoke-on-Trent: Electricity Substations, Postcard, 2008/2015

Stoke-on-Trent seems to have more electricity substations than most cities. Far from utilitarian, each one is a decorative flight of fancy on the part of its architect. Named with reference to their sites, they still stand as modest monuments to the energy hungry industry which was once scattered throughout The Potteries.

Emma Dolphin
Land / Mark, Photograph and digital print, 2015

Land / Marks - man made interventions which are usually the result either industrial or agricultural activities. However, when appropriated and recontextualised in the form of a topographical postcard, these interventions may be seen in a different light.

Manya Doñaque
Museum of the senses and non-archivable material: Performing cultural heritage, Mixed media, 2015

My research to date has examined the relationship between ephemeral art, live art and archives, looking closely at the archival of the creative process (ideas, rituals, diagrams, recordings etc... and the deterioration, decay process and loss of artefacts, traditions, works of art, thinking and making processes. This has made me question how New Digital Media imaging technologies can be usefully employed in the representation of and resolution of the complexities inherent in ephemeral art and the aesthetics of time. I have been working on ideas that reflect on processes of construction of memories by 'performing the archive' addressing alternative ways of dealing with preservation, and this is where the concept of archive Derrida's deconstruction of the act of archiving beautifully opens up the contradictory nature of archives: how they are simultaneously public and private spaces, institutive and conservative, traditional and revolutionary.

Fiona Grady
In my hand, Photograph, 2015

This is a photograph of lantern slide taken in the late 1800s; it is part of the Leeds Thoresby Societies archive. Not only is it a beautiful object but it serves a functional purpose to preserve local history that is now beyond our memories.

I grew up in Headingley and spent much of my youth using the local pubs such as the Original Oak and The Skyrack as descriptive landmarks and local meeting points. Until I saw these slides I hadn't considered that there really was an 'original oak'. We often associate the past with romantic black and white photographs and don't place ourselves within it - it's interesting to where names come from and I wonder if one day in the future they will return to woodlands?

Barbara Greene
Milestone: landmark, monument and sculpture, Photograph, 2015

Monolith, archaeological, mystical, lonely, lost, atmospheric, historic, hand-made, directional, thoughtful, hopeful, panoramic, pathway, way-mark, wool route, mark, sun, mist, rain, moorland, steadfast, strong, processional, organic, age-old, modern, impressive, informative, cultural, contemplative.

Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert
Genuine Artefacts, Frames, Postcards, Transfers from Cigarette Cards (all dating from 1925-1935), 2012

The two parts forming the display shown are, in terms of their existence as whole things, relatively new. However the component objects from which they are assembled – postcards, frames, cigarette cards - were all produced in between 1925 and 1935. The potential for the component objects to have been combined in this manner dates from their time of production; should this potential have been fulfilled at this point then the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ would have initially applied purely to the monuments featured on the postcards. It is now 80 to 90 years since the component parts were manufactured and therefore the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ may be applied not only to the monuments on the postcards but also to the postcards and other components which make up the two parts of the display. At some point in the future the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ will begin to apply to the two parts of the display.

The postcards within the work portray objects that have altered in appearance during the intervening years since their photographs were taken. As this postcard begins its own drift into artefacthood it will itself become a record of what was, referring to objects not as they are but as they were.

Lesley Hicks
Tempelhof and Fernsehturm, Watercolour, 2014

In the midst of flux, monuments and landmarks invite us to pause and reflect, reflect upon what has been, what is now and what is to come. I felt compelled to make this watercolour by the duel presence of two such monuments Templehof (Templehof Airport) and the Fernsehturm (television tower).

Both are iconic and significant buildings, caught up in the dramatic, shifting history of Berlin. It seemed interesting to me to record this visit using a method of depiction that predates photography, film and video. A method that, while it requires the painter’s total concentration upon the accumulation of decisions that will result in the painting, carries with it also it’s own sense of history.

Charlie Hurcombe
Beckett's Memento, Photograph of sculpture / maquette / multiple, 2013

‘Beckett’s Memento’ was originally titled ‘Memento’ and was conceived as a maquette for a proposal to site a monument to mark the dramatic transformation (now complete) of Hanley Bus Station in Stoke on Trent following a Rednile ‘Factory Night’ and an associated residency at PITT Projects in Worcester in 2012.

The form of ‘Beckett’s Memento’ is derived from the ubiquitous paper cup: an often overlooked and taken for granted functional object which carries subtle associations of waiting, departure and arrival .

The monument never materialised and the original ‘Memento’ was itself transformed into a multiple edition of 10 in 2013. Cast in plaster utilising both unused and crumpled paper cup moulds and painted with a faux granite finish. As an object it exists somewhere between the new and the old, between the desired and the unwanted.

The multiple versions of ‘Memento’ (each 160m x 70 x 90mm) failed to find a buyer. Dr James Lattin
The Aegyptian Gates, Photograph, 2015

This is one of several Aegyptian Gates from the area around the town of Angarth. These are gates which people will not open on certain days of the week or month. Records of these days differ greatly which led to a period when people and livestock would not move (or be moved) for days on end.

This photograph is from a series of what might be called 'unheralded monuments' which form part of the Department of Rural Typologies. Along with stone walls, hedgerows and telegraph poles, curator Dr James Lattin (of the Museum of Imaginative Knowledge) hopes to explore these phenomena in more detail.

Sun Ju Lee
A Practiced Place, Digital print, 2012

This work reflects a variety of occurrences from place-making. It reconstructs a place by capturing the experience of surroundings with the visual evidence of time, or by altering them into a form of image that speculates on the situations depicted. Using an approach of accumulation and flattening, reiterative descriptions of people and objects taken from an observed place convey all the happenings of the place, and eventually create an archive of events.

Samuel O'Donnell
Strata, 35mm Film photograph, 2013

Part of a series of photographs exploring the time scales visibly present through built structures. Captured in a manner reminiscent of Thomas Struth, this photo reveals a view of Glasgow's so-called 'Twin Towers' from the Necropolis. The Bluevale and Whitevale flats are just two more infamous and iconic 1960s high-rise projects that have reached the end of their lifespan. Their demolition will be completed by 2016.

Simon Parish
Battered Banyon tree, Marker pen on paper, 2014

The Banyon tree is the national tree of Indonesia. They form landmarks and meeting places in many cities and villages. This drawing depicts a Banyon tree in a built up area of Jakarta. It remained in place despite years of road building and a bus station being placed nearby. However its perceived importance and belief by some in its magical properties had prompted certain groups to challenge these beliefs and so the tree was attacked and hacked apart to prove its powerlessness. This action made the news locally and eventually globally and so came about this drawing, a mysterious power at work maybe.

Katya Robin
Standard Jellies, Photo of site intervention: temporary placement of jelly plaques, 2015

Standard Measures evolved to provide traders, builders, engineers, with benchmarks for distance, weights, and volumes. Disputes and deviations were arbitrated in accordance with the Weights and Measures Acts. The Standard Measures are emblems of both shared need and imposed law.

Due to the reference object, upon which measures are based, changing over time or becoming damaged, supervision and maintenance of the object and replicas are needed. The idea is for the measures to be permanent and static, an unchanging reference for public use.

My units of measure were set in edible jelly ¬– individual, wobbly, consumable, fruit-flavoured gelatin desserts.

I made 10 plaques, each representing 10 units, measurable multiples of 100 jelly units. Their decimal markings, 1 and 0, have reference to binary calculations which can approach infinity and represent most things in the known and unknown universe. They were placed over the now unused imperial Standard Measures, at Sheffield Town Hall.

Archie Salandin
Enough Said, Sculpture with wooden rail and silk flowers, 2014

Something something ‘flowery writing’,
Something something absence,
Something something implied,Something something decision,
Something something specific,
Something something flux,
Something something nothing.

Rachel Sim
Scissors Paper Stone, Printmaking/sculpture/mixed media, 2013

Scissors Paper Stone was commissioned by Wakefield Museum with funding from Arts Council England to create an installation using museum objects and showcased in Wakefield One for a year long duration 2013/2014.

I worked with their collection of stone heads taken from buildings in Wakefield and created a 3D cityscape exploring the themes of renewal and reinvention in architecture. The final installation consisted of a cardboard city built around the stone heads.

Laurie Woodruff
Leeds Postcard, Line drawing and digital collage, 2014

A collection of distinctive and much-loved buildings and monuments in Leeds, selected and illustrated by Laurie Woodruff who was born and raised locally.