Abstract/Summary

Tideway is one of three main UK infrastructure projects, sitting next to HS2 and the completed Crossrail. The project Moving In is sculpture, commissioned by Tideway for a new site developed at Chelsea Embankment, one of seven river locations creating three acres of new public realm. The permanent artwork realises the site-specific narratives set out in the Tideway Heritage Interpretation Strategy (HIS The commission is a tactile artwork integrated into the public realm’s brick vertical planes; it references the site’s materiality as much experiential as visual (clay deposits upriver, and sand deposits downriver, transformed into glazed bricks). The artwork makes visual the physical and conceptual connections back to the river. The position, placement, texture and colour of the brickwork references the river as the vital source of nature, pleasure and infrastructure it has been for centuries. The bricks are marking and indicating changing water levels, changes in visibility, between what is revealed and what is covered. The changing artwork is partially submerged and river deposits will further interact and alter the artwork in years to come. The significance of the commission approach, the artwork and the artist’s role have been an integral element contributing to the overall design of the Chelsea Embankment site throughout the development: rather than sculpture as a distinct, separate object situated discretely within the environment, the commission proposed sculpture as a dispersed, integrated and re-iterative process, both on the one hand, as effecting change through engagement over time, which involves continuous, long-term collaboration and dialogue with all partners and stakeholders at all stages of development; and on the other hand, as change through its spatial legacy, existing throughout and firmly embedded in the whole river environment. The questions are how the process of developing integrated, dispersed sculpture in the public realm is a catalyst for change; how it shapes and influences public realm design processes; and how it impacts on developing specific Heritage Interpretation Strategies and policies and strategies of commissioning large scale and long-term public art?