Hey there, Thankyou for joining me in this Bench Repair project follow along. As you may know it's the first time i've done one of these deeper dives into a project publicly and I'm so overwhelmed by the response (also extremely relieved it's not just me & my family WhatsApp group here! 👋🏼)
As i'm doing this live it's a little hard to be exact but I'm hoping this will be the first of just 6 emails, sent out each Sunday as I work on pulling everything together for this project and install the work in Bristol, UK.
This section of the project runs alongside the exhibition work created for We Are Commoners with Craftspace. No project ever runs in a straight line as often i'm doing bits of everything at once but i'll do my best to keep these mails loosely themed so they flow smoothly as well as being current. In particular i'll show the inlay & tool making as I know that's a bit lots of people are interested in and would like to learn more about.
First up, a quick bit of context:
Bench Repair is a long-standing project of mine, with the first iteration being created in 2009 for Experimenta Biennial with British Council & curated by Clare Cumberlidge. It was the start of so many things for me; my Acts of Care projects (although I didn't know that then) and the start of my tool making becoming an equal part of my exhibit-able practice, and the first of these big international projects looking at heritage and making.
For EXD biennial I went out on a research trip to decide what I wanted to do for the commission and then came home quickly to get my tools together and do some preparation before heading back out again to create the work. When I'm thinking about what to do for any project my starting point is always to walk; wandering the streets looking for interesting spaces, shops, people and trying to notice as much as possible. I was so taken in Lisbon with how public seating areas are used in the blazing Portuguese summer that I spend a lot of time in parks watching people play cards and chess, people taking a rest on the steep street and neighbours sharing gossip.
Looking at the benches in the residential areas away from the main tourist spots, many were damaged and unusable. I decided that fixing these benches would be my work; undertaking a service for the people I was enjoying spending all this time with. I become inspired by the traditional opulent designs of D.Maria, local maps and domestic patterns and wanted to bring elements of these outside, for everyone to share.
Istayed out in Portugal for about 6weeks on this project, learning how to create wood inlay in the workshops of a local foundation and to then go on and execute the work. In total I created five bench repairs ranging from single slat replacement to almost full bench work and each had a different design inlayed into the new slats, individually designed, cut out and inlayed before the mammoth team effort of installing them into Lisbon streets and parks.
So, now you're up-to-date! After years of austerity, public spaces and services in the UK feel like there's some shared characteristics with the Portugal I was working in in 2009. As I was contacted by the wonderful Deirdre at Craftspace for their new exhibition We Are Commoners, it was clear that this was the work I wanted to create. This new iteration for the exhibition would share a model of what is possible and showed the handmade tools and slats that I envisaged would be ones for the UK.
We Are Commoners exhibition is already up and running but as I was creating the work for exhibit, I decided that I wanted to carry on and look after my local public benches also. This would also be the first time i'd actually made work for Bristol despite living here for nearly 10 years!
The first step is to audit the benches in the park, taking note of size, damage and bench style and compile this info onto a google map I can share with the team of collaborators and new friends. One such group of friends is the Victoria Park Action Group who have done their best to care for and maintain the park and its furniture for many years. Within this particular park there are at least 7 types of bench, and sadly the trend over the years is going down in terms of character and quality in my opinion. Somewhere near the top are the lovely cast metal & wooden slat benches, with a rolled top (for comfortably leaning back or perching on from the back), lions head arm rests and 'BC' for Bristol City added to the decorative elements on the sides. Sat miserably at the bottom on my Bristol park bench chart are the black metal 'vandal-proof' (hint: they're not) benches that are the very opposite of welcoming as they hold water on the top, are uncomfortable and cold/hot depending on the day.
Because these benches are metal, any work I could do to them would be considered destructive and so I will focus my efforts on looking after and celebrating the wooden benches when these public objects were created to the very highest standards and served as examples of what is possible when the city 'holds' its people.
See you next week for tools, a collaboration with digital artist Finbar Marcel, and Cultural Geographer Leila Dawney and I need to make some new veneers ready to start designing the new slats as I'm running out!
I hope you have a lovely week
Please do forward this mail to any friends who might be interested
