Colour Connections: A new sculpture for Warwick
A new installation – designed to encourage people to play – has been unveiled outside University House. Sarah Shalgosky, Principal Curator of the Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre, tells us more…
How and when did the idea for this sculpture come about?
In 2015, Warwick built our first cross-disciplinary teaching building – the Oculus, named after its eyeball-shaped arrangement of windows. However, it was built on Tocil field, an open-grassed area that sat between student residences and the main campus. There was an outcry from students at the loss of this informal play and social space.
Play is an intrinsic part of life. A new field was identified for students, but we also started to think about how we could create an urban play space on campus. The artist Dr Tine BechLink opens in a new window has created a large body of public work that invites play in city spaces across the world – and so, Warwick asked Tine to explore campus and develop a proposal that could invite play.
Above: Local schoolchildren get to grips with the sculpture
What was Tine's approach for starting this project?
Tine visited campus numerous times – she gave lectures, held seminars with staff and students, and above all, walked the campus, observing how people used the space.
She identified the need for a space that could invite people to stop as well as to speed them on their way, to play but also to reflect, to socialise but also to daydream. Her proposal was a maze of coloured glass panels that would sit in one of the planned bays along the new path to the Sports and Wellness Hub – a brilliant play of colour through which people could move or sit. She also recognised the potential for digital engagement – the way that people could celebrate friendships and themselves through posts on Instagram.
Above: Installation takes place outside University House
There were some challenges along the way - tell us about these...
The first hitch came when the bays along the route to the Sports Hub were removed from the final design. Undaunted, Tine’s new proposal was for the urban square outside University House, which is an intersection in the student pathway from their residences at Westwood to the academic buildings on central campus. The work presents a playful note against a building which looks quite corporate, and the site sits adjacent to an outdoor seating area – its orientation maximises the play of coloured light cast by the coloured glass panels.
A final site meeting in March 2020, it was agreed that the installation would take place in time for the summer graduation. Of course, there was no summer graduation, because of the Covid pandemic.
Post-Covid, how did planning for the sculpture continue?
Plans to reinstate the sculpture started again in 2022. It was at this point that someone referred to it as the ‘Covid sculpture’. Its rainbow of colours, starting with rose in the east and ending with lilac at the westernmost point, is a reminder of the rainbows of hope that were placed in windows during the summer of 2020. The glass panels hold people apart but allow communication through a brilliant array of colours.
The sculpture is now titled Colour Connections – it speaks of the emotive power of colour and how we share a delight in its beauty. We asked Tine if she felt that the Covid link could be shared when we communicated about her work, and she was happy for those memories to find a place here. This, after all, is the power of art – that people view it through the lens of their experience and find points of connection that speak strongly to them.
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Right: Schoolchildren explore the sculpture - which "invites play"
