TOWN HALL ARTWORKS (2009-12)
Town Hall Artworks was a 3-year partnership project between Artsadmin and the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green, London. From 2009-2012 I co-curated with Manick Govinda (Artsadmin) two major series of artists’ commissions for public areas of the building.
The first series was curated through an open call / selection panel process inviting artists living and/or working locally to create works in response to the history of the site, as it transitioned from being a long disused town hall into a hotel designed by architecture firm Rare.
Whereas the inaugural series of commissions focused on locality and the civic history of Bethnal Green Town Hall, the second phase embraced exuberance, material and sensual desire and the notion of hotels as transitory and utopian sites of pleasure and hypermobility. 25 works in all were commissioned, the majority of which remain in situ. They range from Sarah Baker’s Do Not Disturb signs to Corinne Felgate’s Über-Achiever made from 10,000 gold stars to Peter Liversidge’s publication Proposals for Town Hall Hotel and Apartments, in which he sets out concepts - some feasible, some outlandish - for what could happen there.
Artists commissioned : Bálint Bolygó, Debbie Lawson, Peter Liversidge, Claire Morgan, walkwalkwalk (Serena Korda, Gail Burton and Clare Qualmann), Zoë Mendelson, Bernd Behr, Bethan Lloyd Worthington, Corinne Felgate, Kristian de la Rive, Michaela Nettell, Sarah Baker and Toby Christian.
To see these works, visit the Town Hall Hotel; a guide to the artworks is available from the reception for all visitors.
Images L to R : Town Hall Hotel by rare architecture; Finger (V) by Toby Christian; Über-Achiever by Corinne Felgate; To Woo You by Claire Morgan; Love Lane by Debbie Lawson; Blackbird by Walkwalkwalk;Echoes by Michaela Nettell; Safecarder by Zoë Mendelson (all by photographer James Royall)