Waterline & Tidal word wave
BRIDLINGTON, 2014
Tidal Word Wave - glass balustrade and Waterline - wall panels, on Bridlington South Promenade. A Yorkshire Water commission. With Adrian Riley (Electric Angel Design) and Jo Holmes (Cardigan and Mac).
The words, letters, names and numbers incorporated within these artworks are all taken from photographs of Bridlington seafront. The photographs were taken on a particular day, 1st May 2013, the start of the bathing season. They represent contemporary Bridlington through a ‘snapshot’ of the seafront on that day.
Waterline and Tidal Word Wave aim to bring the beauty of Bridlington seafront into an artwork. The expanse of sky and sea, the changing weather and varying light conditions are harnessed and reflected through the use of mirror and glass. This natural beauty is combined with images and text inspired by the seafront, to create artwork that changes through day to night and across the seasons.
The wall panels feature sweeping lines taken from drawings of the 1912 sailing coble ‘The Three Brothers’ which was under restoration in the boat yard on the ‘snapshot’ day.
The silver mirror text on Tidal Word Wave has been arranged in a statistically accurate wave-form that graphically represents tide heights during the bathing season, between 1st May and 30th September 2013.
The 1st of May is widely the first day of the bathing season on the Yorkshire Coast , and so it seemed appropriate to choose this date as the one on which to take a ‘snapshot’ of contemporary seafront life. This ‘snapshot’ is the starting point for the commission. The artwork featured ‘found text’ extracted from photographs of the seafront and harbour, along with drawings based on an old sailing cobble, The Three Brothers, which was being restored at the time.
I’m a proper fan of collaborations, and for this project I teamed up with typography whizz and an artist/designer, Adrian Riley of Electric Angel Design, and artist Jø Holmes, who was brought on board as a result of his interest in collecting narratives through photographic images.
The images below show (from top down): a sketch of the Headworks, new extension and beach huts; a photograph of the Headworks pumping station as it is now; an abstract detail of the concrete surface, shadows and railings; the Three Brothers being restored; and images of found text from the harbour.
Waterline
Tidal Word Wave balustrade
All Part Of The Process
