- Venue
- Blink - Northampton
- Location
A clearing has been made in the centre of Northampton’s Market Square, which is usually filled by rows of red and white topped stalls. Most of the stalls have been left in place around the perimeter, and form a new square for the event BLINK, a series of artworks and interventions, which began on 23rd July and will run until the Summer Sundae event on 1st August.
In the middle of the cleared space artist Laura Ellen Bacon has installed the second of a series of three sculptures. These are curving forms of woven blue polypropylene ribbon onto a metal frame, which have been made in collaboration with metalworker Michael Johnson. The central piece stretches upwards towards her first piece, a similar shape bursting out of the window of a building on the edge of the square as though attempting to join the other.
On the opening weekend, Bacon could be found adding more ribbon to her woven structure, and chatting to/being interrogated by the onlooker’s. One man asked what it was, and seemed unsatisfied, quite rightly, with being told it was organic and abstract. This organic felt arbitrary and clumsily opposed with the man-made quality of the ribbon. It just doesn’t seem enough to make something man made curved and call it organic when elsewhere in the square Simon Heijdens digitally projected fake plants actually grow with changes in the surrounding space, such as rainfall, sunshine, and wind, as well as seeds that mimic the movement of passers by. A successful manifestion of the way the space is used, directly linking people, technology, and nature. Jo Fairfax’s LED light installation also pales in comparison, looking like so many other light works on multiplexes and monuments in various cities around the country.
At least Bacon’s ongoing weaving gave people the chance to ask her questions. Being able to watch her work was successful in provoking nostalgia for craft and making by hand. I overheard one woman say to a stall owner while observing the artist ‘I don’t know what I’d do without my knitting’, while two others chatted with the artist about their days weaving wire, and were eager to attend the installation of the third piece to be made with the public on the closing weekend. The choice of ribbon (albeit blue and tacky) drew my attention to some of the regular stalls, several of which sold fabric, ribbons, buttons, things to make things yourself with. This attitude is something BLINK draws attention to, opposing current modes of mass-production and consumption.
This idea is more refined in Simon Hasan’s ‘Industrial Makeshift’. His carousel vending machine contains leather objects formed by the medieval process of Cuir Bouilli, using steam and then resin to mould the leather around coca-cola bottles and ‘pound-shop’ items. Hasan focuses attention on neglected processes, referencing the leather crafting history of the town, and also an exhibition which some of the locals might remember, titled ‘Froth and Fizz: Northamptonshire Drink Bottles before 1940’[1]. The artefacts are embossed with the artists name and are numbered, similarly to the glass and stoneware bottles local brewers would have used their own inscriptions on. The vending machine is sensitively installed under the same red and white tent found on the rest of the marketplace, and the objects are successful in their crudeness with the ‘archaeological’ quality the press release claims. Although there were event organisers alongside it to inform and answer questions, it would have been great to hear someone shouting about it along with the grocers bellows of ‘cherries for a pound!’. The public can purchase the leather objects for only £3. Bargain!
BLINK does something different with public art, using a temporary event to make people reconsider their environment, and although it is successful and enjoyable in many ways, it could have done more. To only partially clear a space of traders feels confused and half-hearted. Maybe if all traders were missing and only the empty stalls had been left the sense of something lost would have been much stronger, rather than by putting Bacon’s sculpture there instead that acts in the same boring, sort of monumental way that seems the standard for much public art. Maybe that’s just too disruptive. I can’t imagine getting traders to give up a weeks work would be an easy task. Maybe the councils and local communities need to give artists more freedom to take risks like that, rather than only giving so much resulting in work that feels too safe and acceptable. That said, Hasan’s and Heijdens’ works manage to slot in well with minimal disruption. So it can be done, and is thoroughly worth the visit, especially to be able to buy a great piece of work for just £3, an opportunity not to be missed!
[1] Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, 1977
