Steve Messam’s Inflatable Installations Spotlight How Landscapes and Structure Form Communities and Tradition

Whether or not coaxing new life from deserted constructions in expansive landscapes or drawing consideration to modest city components, Steve Messam provokes shifts in perspective and new methods of seeing our environment. The County Durham-based artist creates site-specific, inflatable installations that recontextualize ruins, statues, or stately structure into short-term public sculptures. Working internationally, a lot of his tasks additionally concentrate on areas round his residence within the North of England, drawing consideration to landscapes wealthy with historical past, relics of that are simple to miss.

Messam performs with ideas of visible landmarks and follies in his sequence Architect of Ruins, spotlighting a handful of dilapidated remnants round Weardale and Teesdale, starting from World Warfare II pillboxes to disused railway bridges to crumbling industrial stays. “By highlighting these typically neglected constructions, the challenge goals to disclose the layers of narrative that make up the story of the panorama, from mining and agriculture to the transformative impact of the railways and the function of landowners,” he says.

In one other current work, “Belltower,” the artist attracts consideration to the recognizable Home Bell Turret of Ushaw in Durham, which has “extra Pugin structure than you possibly can shake a gothic stick at,” Messam says. “I needed to put in a bit that might act as a silhouette to what already exists and create an homage to among the unimaginable Gothic Revival structure on the location.”

 

Choosing a extra fashionable canvas, Messam created “Crested”—a part of Blow Up Artwork Den Haag—on high of a recent entrance to a subterranean parking storage, toying with language and kind to create an summary, pointed crown. His installations for this system final autumn interpreted historic landmarks, and this yr he was eager to reframe one thing pointedly not historic. “A crest is one thing you might have on a hen—one thing on high of a head—however it’s additionally the whiteness on a wave when it breaks,” he says. “It doesn’t get extra ‘not of be aware’ than the doorway to an underground automotive park.” By putting in huge pink spikes on high of a practical constructing designed to mix in, Messam provides it “its second,” reworking an unassuming construction into a focus.

Blow Up Artwork Den Haag continues via Could 28, and the sequence Encounters at Bicester Village stays on view into June. He additionally has 4 new items at Clerkenwell Design Week later within the month, and the Nationwide Railway Museum in York will unveil a brand new everlasting set up in July. See extra work on his web site, Instagram, and a rising archive of tasks on Vimeo.

 

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