There’s a real buzz to open-air art
DARLINGTON’S Lingfield Point business park has unveiled the second Futurescope image in its two-year open-air arts programme.
The Beeman is a 45ft diameter image of Dave Wilson, head of landscaping and maintenance and chief beekeeper at Lingfield Point, which recently installed a set of hives from which it hopes to retail honey.
The image is more thought- provoking and challenging than the sunflowers that went before and reflects the site’s industrial past and a new environmental heritage.
“This new image is about giving the artists the freedom to do what they set out to do and be challenging,” said John Orchard, director of Lingield Point developers Marchday: “(It) will mean lots of things to lots of people and you can read into it in many different ways.”
Eight massive circular photographs and images will have been displayed on the eastern elevation of the Powerhouse, which looms over the main transport corridor around Darlington, by the time the exhibition ends.
Christian Barnes of Vista Projects, one of the Cumbrian-based artists involved in Futurescope, believes the image linked the site’s past, present and future, saying “Although green infrastructure and the industrial past might seem like two opposite sides competing for the future of the site we think they are like two sides of the same coin.”
