Free Area
This series of works by Bristol based artists Jonathan Moseley and Sophie Warren is informed by a research visit to Mexico City in 2003. During this visit the artists observed how public space is occupied by its inhabitants and how it is adapted and appropriated for various activities using materials that are 'to hand'. The artists explore public spaces in Bristol on the point of being developed or reconsidered. The work draws on the language of planning, studying how areas of a city are allocated for particular uses and how this influences our experience of those areas. FREE AREA questions the desire to regulate how, when and who uses public space by imagining other possibilities for how these places can be occupied beyond the physical and the planned. The work introduces the idea of a 'soft city' - a city made from memory, aspiration and desire in relation to the hard built environment, locating the personal and intimate in relation to the public and shared.
The following two works are the third in a series of temporary works in relation to public spaces in Central Bristol.
FREE AREA: Former site of proposed Centre for Performing Arts, Canon's Marsh, Bristol, UK
Text cut into 8 recycled Corona Extra cardboard boxes placed and left 19th May 2004
FREE AREA: Former site of proposed Centre for Performing Arts, Canon's Marsh, Bristol
Jonathan Moseley and Sophie Warren, 2004
Orientation of site:
To north: A strip of national chain bars.
To east: The docks.
To south: An auditorium built by Lloyds TSB used by office workers, skate boarders and BMX riders.
To southwest: The head office of Lloyds TSB bank.
To north west: At Bristol Millennium leisure development and a 7.89 hectare harbourside development by Crest Nicholson currently under construction.
Orientation of boxes on site: At regular intervals along a west-east axis determined by the City Council Planning Department's Local Plan*.
FREE AREA: Non-site: Proposed Alterations to the Local Plan
A flattened recycled Corona Extra cardboard box spliced with the City Council Planning Department's Local Plan*
FREE AREA: Non-site: Proposed Alterations to the Local Plan
Jonathan Moseley and Sophie Warren, 2004
* The Local Plan is a colour coded map designating different uses to areas of city.
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
Series to be documented on Situations website: www.situations.org.uk
Generously supported by the University of the West of England Faculty of the Built Environment.
