Just a quick release on 'Futurescope' our new art commission in Darlington.

This is two year sequential exhibition of big round pictures on an employment site in Darlington called Lingfield Point visible from the A66.
It is a creative collaboration between John Kennedy and Christian Barnes.
The first Picture 'Sunflowers' which we have made ourselves has been put up for the beginning of July. It will be followed with a new picture every three months for the next two years. We might make or curate them. We are happy to have suggestions and ideas and to work with others.
We are thinking about the project as a 'rhetorical device' and the content as being propagandist.
When it's over - its over.
The images will be linked to themes of culture, economy, environment, agriculture and ecology.
We are grateful to Marchday PLC / Lingfield Investments for commissioning us to develop and deliver this project and for taking an interest in the dialogue that we have developed about the public realm and green space though working together on and off over the last 6 years and we are looking forward to installing the other pictures. Although we have some ideas, we haven't actually resolved what these pictures will be or how they will be made and won't actually decide anything until about three weeks before they go up. We really hope the project has the effect of catalysing change on the Lingfield site in a positive way and that some of our vision for the urban brown field landscape can find its way into reality in Darlington.

Web resources
Here is a small film of the first picture being made and put up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZij8KlXPns
If you want to know more about it and follow the project as it develops over the next couple of years you can join Futurescope's facebook group or subscribe to my blog from the Lingfield Point website at http://www.lingfieldpoint.co.uk/#futurescope/Home

Hope to see you there.

Christian.

John Kennedy and Christian Barnes have worked (or are working) together on the following projects.

March 2010: ‘Chicken City’ a joint exhibition (architecture and poultry keeping event) at the Gracefield Arts Centre Dumfries.

June 2009 June 2011 ‘Futurescope’ A sequential outdoor exhibition of 8 massive circular photographs on the Lingfield Point power plant building facing the A66. A proposal for Marchday plc devised by Christian Barnes and John Kennedy (Lead Artists) with Tees Valley Arts

From March 2006: Under contract to Tees Valley Arts to develop a Landscape Architecture competition (RIBA Advisor John Kennedy) for Soft-Hard Landscape for the A66 East Middlesbrough Business Action Zone and Western approaches from Newport Bridge in partnership with Middlesbrough Borough Council and Halcrow (working to Balfour Beattie). Architectural Appointment offered to Ian McChesney Architects.

April 2007: 'The Cloffocks' Creativity and Conservation. Sub-consultant with John Kennedy – Landlab (Landscape Architects) to Capita Symonds for a project in Cumbria.

January 2007: Under contract to Falkirk Council in partnership with John Kennedy - Landlab (Landscape Architects) as Lead Artists (Sentinels) for Falkirk’s Big Lottery Bid ‘The Helix’. A Big Lottery award of £25,000,000 has been won by the partnership from a competitive field of 313 entrants. The project is undergoing mobilisation.