Event:space (2014)
Event:space is a public artwork located in the back court area of flats in the New Gorbals, Glasgow. My intention was to produce a visually interesting as well as functional installation that would be a place for neighbours to meet, sit and gather.
The installation consists of seven seating units each with a coloured glass panel with text.
At night the panels become backlit by in-ground LED up-lighters.
There are two lines of text that run throughout the seven glass panels:
1. All that is solid melts into air
2. Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved
(1) All That Is Solid Melts into Air is an academic text written by Marshall Berman between 1971 and 1981, and published in New York in 1982. The book examines social and economic modernization and its conflicting relationship with modernism. The title of the book is taken from a piece of text in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
(2) Endless forms… is taken from the last line of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859)
Seven hard-wood sections of 1m (w) x 1m (d) x varying lengths, stainless steel frames, toughened glass (seven colours and text designs, with sandblasted text at rear to catch lighting at night).
It was commissioned by The Artworks Programme for New Gorbals Housing Association.