Image by Andrew Aitch (https://www.andrew-aitch.co.uk also represented by Saul Hay Gallery)
There are a lot of things I love about this image.
It is very familiar, I know it well. It is Fountain Street in Manchester city centre, walking away from the Town Hall towards Spring Gardens and Market Street. In fact there is not just one street here, there are also two cross streets, Spring Gardens and York Street are just about visible. I used Fountain Street as a regular short cut to avoid the crowds on the main streets nearby, and a building I worked in backed onto this street. I know what it feels like to be in a street like this, to be surrounded by tall buildings crowding on every side, all different styles and dates and purposes. I know what it is like to have a lot of choices of route, whether to stay on this street or turn left or right at each junction, a multitude of options to navigate from one point to another.
I like the fact that the street is so prominent in the image, the wide space between the buildings. I have been looking at the streets in the last 'free' semester, as I felt that I was missing an element of space and movement in practice 2, because I chose an enclosed space in the city for that module.
The groups of buildings are seemingly crowded together, but at a human level easily navigable. This closeness of the buildings, but the many possible routes through the streets and sidestreets, is something I am trying to develop using my interlocking vessels.
Inspired by this image, I abstracted a shape, leaving a central space narrowing towards the line of sight, and made an interlocking design of the buildings pushing forward at different depths along the street. I made a template for this shape and cut out a base slab, with shallow slabs for the sides. I wasn't sure whether to make the central shape into an interlocking pot or remove it.
I then started to build the individual pots. Initially, I wondered whether to make the whole outside edge and then cut it, so that the pieces would fit together more tightly, this seemed like a good idea, on the left hand side, but became difficult when I reached the curved piece, so I abandoned the idea there.
Going forward into Practice 3, I plan to develop my interlocking pots further, and present them together and apart, and maybe emphasise the spaces between the forms more. This has been a good reminder to me of how it feels to be amongst the city streets and buildings.
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