POINT OF DECAY

PUBLIC SPACE INTERVENTION:

INSTALL 28-08-15
“Bottle Alley, Hastings is one of those unique spaces that has always captured our imaginations. It’s unrelenting 440meters of concrete is hard and linear, framing the sea on one side so the experience of walking/ promenading is elevated out of being a dreary underground passage cut through, to one of a beach side gallery.”

POINT OF DECAY was an outdoor subterranean street art installation of wheat paste post ups, devised and curated by us, works printed on super thin copy paper covering the 112 columns over half a kilometer long installation.

Bottle Alley’s decline over the last decade or so has reached the point where something has to be done in order to save this unique feature, on Hastings seafront, from being lost forever. Finances were put in place to treat and repair the very worst of the decay in early 2016 allowing us the unique opportunity to present an installation of local artists in the space, a first in Bottle Alley’s 80 year history.

ABOVE: Emily Johns –St.Leonards -Edgelands / Peter Quinnell –Happiness; Health, Beauty, Youth, Teeth; Time /  Hermione Allsopp – Untitled / Alan Rankle+Rebecca Youseffi –Alluvione d’Oro /  Beccy McCray –Hastings and St.Leonards Noticeboard / Leigh Dyer –Fish Bones /  Martin O’Neill –Slowly The Options Run Out. Schwarze Serie

We commissioned 16 local artists to create original artwork for the columns that line the alleyway, in response to and utilising the crumbling and blown nature of the architecture, creating second skins for the supports, that embrace the state Bottle Alley finds itself in. The artworks, attached using wheat paste, were from a wide ranging group of artists – printmakers, photographers, sculptors, painters and interventionists – some of whom presented their work as print for the very first time. The artworks are wrapped around all four sides of the columns therefore giving 4 view points of all the artwork, including from the beach.

ABOVE: ZEROH – The Meeting / Deborah Bowness –Demolition Wall/ Grande Dame – We Came From The Sea / Jo Perfect – He Who Cannot Obey Himself Will Be Commanded / Danny Pockets – The Life & Times of Lego Faced Johnson / Shuby – Ruined / Alex Brattell – Oblate Telly / Robert Sample – Sea Battles From 1914 -1918 / Haxan – The 7 Stones of Haxan

The installation remained in place for as long as possible allowing environmental factors and the general public to aid its decay.
The opening event, attended by over 1,500 people over the course of 2 hours, featured The Rayner Hess Trio playing a selection of classical pieces as the sunset in the bastion nearest the pier, which had just opened.

UPDATE 25-01-16
Our time is up – nature, time and the public have all taken their toll and intervened with the artwork in Bottle Alley, it’s reached the Point of Decay and the restoration of the walkaway has begun.

@