even though it’s the same as the 4kb word document…I just don’t comprehend…ah well, que cera cera…
Derby Baths is an activity that includes performance and fabrication – to make real, and fake, sand castles to then be installed inland, sited away from the seaside.
Derby Baths is an aberration, to see something so familiar and so abundant in a seaside town “where you least expect it”. To re-appropriate a ready-made, to take it out of it’s context and site sand castles inland, in and around Blackpool on pavements, ledges, doorways, window ledges, nooks and crannies.
- SouthShore (between Squires Gate – Harrowside – Watson Road)
- Central (between Bloomfield – Revoe – Hornby Road)
- North (between Caunce Street – Claremont – Gynn Square)
Derby Baths will borrow sand from the beach (to be returned) as well as fabricating fake sand castles (plaster and/or concrete, ‘glazed’ in sand, to remain, until removed) to site together, side by side, comparing and contrasting temporary and permanent states. There is potential to cast in bronze, depending on fabrication costs and then site one of these microments permanently (with appropriate Blackpool Council permission).
The material, ‘grains of gold’, sand from the golden mile is the fabric and foundation of Blackpool’s tourist economy. Sandgrown is the colloquial name for someone born and bred in Blackpool, Sandgrown is Blackpool blood.
The product’s a castle, an Englishman’s home but a sand castle can easily be knocked down or washed away with waves, forgotten about after the funs finished.
Installation of sand castles at selected sites to involve ‘many hands’ wearing hi-viz clothes, a ceremony at each site, filmed for a secondary audience.
Recently there has been a growth in ‘buskers’ creating sand sculptures in town centres, a demonstration of a skill/craft but making sand castle is child’s play. You buy the mould from a souvenir shop on the front, fill it with sand, turn it upside down and voila! Easy, anyone could do it!
Recalling A level economics the work/leisure trade off revolved around labour supply/demand and the premise that as wages rise workers would be able to trade; less work, more leisure.
Unfortunately economics is a model based on ‘perfect’ knowledge. I submit a proposed activity and if selected agree to be remunerated approximately the living wage – a successful submission perpetuates the precarious “Weisure” off.
Mindful of the context I’m aware many workers in Blackpool are employed seasonally and are paid the minimum wage – their ability to afford their own home/castle is beyond their control, a position I have empathy with.
My practice embraces egalitarianism and researches the idea that an artist’s practice is their work and, as such, there is nothing necessarily special or unique about being an artist, it’s a choice amongst many. I think creativity is an essential human universal, through making work which anyone can do I aim to encourage interaction and dialogue between residents, artists and audiences about what it means to work as an artist, complicit in a competitive, consumer society.
