Weston-super-Mare (UK), launched 2010.
Produced for ‘Wonders of Weston’ by Situations, in association with Field Arts Projects, and funded by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
Wrights & Sites’ Everything you need to build a town is here is a 41-sited, permanent public artwork exploring walking, regeneration and built environment. Drawing on the collective’s walking practices to respond to the changing fortunes of a British seaside town’s fabric, the imperatives for the commissioned work were:
•What role can performance and peripatetic practices play within the context of regeneration-driven ‘permanent’ public art work?
•In contrast to single-sited monumental public art, what strategies might be developed for a more viral engagement between public art and the everyday built environment?
•What role can performance and peripatetic practices play within the context of regeneration-driven ‘permanent’ public art work?
•In contrast to single-sited monumental public art, what strategies might be developed for a more viral engagement between public art and the everyday built environment?
‘Wonders of Weston’ also featured commissions from internationally renowned contemporary artists Ruth Claxton, Tim Etchells, Lara Favaretto, Tania Kovats in association with landscape architects Grant Associates, and raumlaborberlin. It was produced by Situations, a Bristol-based public art commissioning and research programme, in association with Field Art Projects, an arts consultancy operating in the public realm. The programme was developed as part of the nationally acclaimed Sea Change initiative (2008-2010), funded by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE, 1999-2011) on behalf of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and was managed by North Somerset Council.
Images: Stephen Hodge, Cathy Turner, Stefan Kraus (Polimekanos), Jamie Woodley.
A sign found in the Uphill district of Weston-super-Mare
The town quarry
Looking seaward from Dolphin Square
Wrights & Sites meet Situations in a seafront café
Polimekanos' design for the 'keystone' sign
Close-up of a prototype aluminium cast sign
Map and locations of the 41 signs
A sign being installed on Marine Parade
A sign from 'The Amateur Builder' layer
A sign from 'The Botanical' layer
A sign from the 'Ands' layer
A sign from the 'Time' layer
A sign from 'The Great Architect' layer
A sign from 'The Panoptic' Layer
A sign from the 'Foundations' layer
A sign from the 'Light' layer
The 'Wonders of Weston' launch invitation
Another found sign from our reconnaissance walking
More information about the work
A deeper dive into Everything you need to build a town is here and the wider 'Wonders of Weston' programme can be had by following the links below.
Visit the archived Situations Wonders of Weston page.
Section of a BBC4 'Front Row' feature about seaside regeneration and the work
Associated Wrights & Sites outcomes
Wrights & Sites led a public guided tour at the ‘Wonders of Weston’ launch in October 2010.
In 2012, we were commissioned to produce a concept/feasibility study for a new public art work at Bedford United in the Tamar Valley Area Of Natural Beauty.
Additionally, we were invited to contribute a co-authored chapter 'Performance and the Stratigraphy of Place: Everything you need to build a town is here' to Paul Graves-Brown (ed.), Rodney Harrison (ed.) and Angela Piccini (ed.) (2013), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 149-163.