Patterns of Place 2014

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Dual projection installation, glass, transparent media, mirror, metal frame

Commissioned for Museums at Night, Grimsby Minster, 2014.

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Commissioned for Museums at Night at Grimsby Minster, Patterns of Place, is a site specific, site responsive work, taking ideas of memory and recollection to propose new ways of looking at the everyday. The installation comprises dual projections onto and through transparent media, holding moving image on suspended multi-layered, multi-levelled screens. 

 

Inspired by Elton John’s song Grimsby, from the Carribou album (1974), with lyrics by the then local song writer Bernie Taupin, the imagery takes a tour around the town, filming some of the main routes, re-presenting footage as a physical and psychological travel through time, space and place.

 

Written while touring the United States in the mid 1970's, the song is about memories, recollections and longing. It tells of a place very different to the Grimsby of today, yet which is still remembered through associations and connections to other people and times. 

 

The work explores ideas of place and our relation to environment, playing with images to create new ways to apprehend the taken for granted environment of the everyday. While nostalgia and longing are immanent to the song, Patterns of Place sets the sights and sites of the town to new patterns and rhythms, celebrating the town’s rich past, and proposing changed perspectives that speak of future and potential.

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‘Oh, Grimsby,

a thousand delights

couldn’t match the sweet sights of

my Grimsby, 

oh … nothing compares to my Grimsby.’

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Elton John, Grimsby

Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

1974

 

Photography © Joolze Dymond