Swinegate Underbridge is located beneath a main railway line along a major route into the city centre of Leeds, not far from Leeds Station. Over time it has become grimy and uninviting, explains Kate Morton.
It sees much traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, all through the day and night in this economically booming city. ‘Continuous Flow’, a recently commissioned public artwork, has been installed as part of the city centre bridge environmental improvements scheme, which aims to improve the appearance of railway bridges on key routes including the waterfront and other parts of the city. It forms part of a wider strategy for attractively and effectively ‘re-joining’ parts of the city divided by river, canal and railway systems, and disconnected by industrial development and post-industrial decline.
Leeds City Centre Management, in partnership with Network Rail, commissioned Public Arts to develop a brief, advise on artist selection, and ensure delivery of the resulting scheme by co-ordinating the work of the many players involved. The project took approximately eight months from instruction in autumn 2002 to completion last spring. Sites like Swinegate are extremely challenging and any public art solution must embrace a difficult combination of artistic vision and practicality. The brief called for the brightening of the passage, enhancing people’s experience of travelling through the space by car and on foot and also making it feel safer. It also had to function well and be easily maintained.
Nottingham-based artist Raphael Daden was selected from a shortlist of three artists who were invited to produce initial proposals for the site. His proposal involved 20 high-pressure sodium projector luminaries with good energy efficiency and a life expectancy of 16,000 hours. An electronic, computer-controlled dimming device creates a moving wave effect. The various colour filters throw light against the wall and provide pools of light across the pavement with changing levels of intensity.
As with all such projects there were specific exploratory difficulties. At one end of the wall were hoardings which could not be removed for commercial reasons. Additionally, meshing the artist’s lighting with the ambient and other functional lighting in the underbridge area presented a challenge. Although there have been some compromises, the work fundamentally succeeds in enhancing the experience of the space. Such interventions, though modest, help make urban areas more attractive and demonstrate a local authority’s commitment to imaginative regeneration in a way that is not merely functional or simply aesthetic, but a synthesis of both. They enhance a partnership approach to improving a city’s appearance and send a signal of creativity and sophistication which, in the case of Leeds, is an important message as it aims strategically to be perceived as a truly European city.
Public Arts and similar organisations are able to facilitate works like ‘Continuous Flow’ because of our extensive knowledge of the field and of managing such projects, some large, some small, all of them complex in different ways. At the beginning we put forward a plan detailing the many stages of the project, how long it will take and how much it will cost. This enables the client to make an informed decision on how to proceed and, facing many pressures from within and without, be confident that the project will look good, be delivered on time and within budget. We also manage projects so as to maintain communication between the artist, the client, and other contributors and stakeholders. Regular liaison ensures that the completed project satisfies as far as possible the aim, the brief, the community, the client, and the artist, involving everyone along the way.
Kate Morton is Project Manager for Public Arts. t: 01924 215550;
e: kate@public-arts.co.uk; w: http://www.public-arts.co.uk