Installation by
Joseph Watts, Haywood Slucutt and Owen Hart

Light projections and soundscape by
ANTIVJ & Damien Schneider

BRISTOL 2009
74 – 76 The Horsefair, Broadmead, Bristol, BS1 3JS

As part of Steal From Work’s collaboration with ‘Street Art Dealer’, Bristol based artists Joseph Watts and Haywood Slucutt were commissioned to create a spacious work of art that would subsequently be made into high quality giclée prints, accessible to the general public via QR code technology. Their response was imaginative, ambitious and challenging.

Situated in the context of a disused shop in central Broadmead, the sculptural installation simulates an architectural collapse, resembling the remains of a mutated ‘accident’. Initially designed as a virtual 3D model, the sculpture was then realised in wood, piece by piece as a massive and complex puzzle. The accentuated, whitewashed forms, in the shape of I beam girders are structurally merged and entangled, as if the supporting walls and floor were liquefied for an instant and then frozen in a hyper-realized moment.

This mesh of girders becomes a 3 dimensional backdrop for a 2 dimensional painted image that can be clearly distinguished from a single point in the room. It reads ‘MEANWHILE BACKSTAGE…’ Starting from a consideration of the IMMERSIVE experience of Bristol’s central shopping district, the choice of words is meant as a provocative response to, and reversal of Cabot Circus’ main advertising slogan -the affirmative and directive: ‘TAKE CENTRE STAGE’. These theatrical connotations and more are elaborated in an accompanying text; a critical ‘meta-fiction’ developed in collaboration with artist and writer Owen Hart.

A further collaboration with internationally renowned light projection artists ANTIVJ and sound artist Damien Schneider has resulted in an immersive augmentation of the installation. Using innovative 3D mapping software the artists have delineated the fractured mass of geometric forms of BEAM, onto which digital textures and sounds will be projected.