TIME & PLACE – An exhibition charting the making of a new sculpture for Taunton by Olivia Sanders 29th March – 30th April

An exhibition charting the making of a new sculpture for Taunton by Olivia Sanders 29th March – 30th April.

Gallery and Cafe open Tuesday -Saturday 10-4pm

When given complete artistic freedom to create a site specific public art work for a new building, the mind boggles, fizzes and spins with endless possibilities, with ideas, materials and references: it starts to investigate, scribble on envelopes, ask questions, skitter down rabbit holes, cost things out: it considers fossils at the museum, stays awake in the small hours: then slowly settles down, discards 90 % of thoughts to date, begins to understand what would make sense, would fit the place, connect to the building, be part of the landscape, feel right.

The sculpture, Time & Place, is the result.
Two wild 4 tonne blocks of Somerset stone, red from the west, yellow from the east, stand facing each other, each with a single cut and polished face, placed in conjunction with the blue brick column rising through 8 stories of the triangular north east corner of the newly completed Quantock House.
If you stand between the stones, perhaps you will feel them as a bridge between a 21st century building and the ancient geology of Somerset, a connecting place between Somerset’s rural landscape and historic urban architecture: as a link between the wild and the manufactured, and between ancient geological time and this moment.

Quantock House is an independent living apartment complex developed by Platinum Skies, and it was a condition of the planning permission, granted by Somerset West and Taunton Council, (formerly TDBC), that a public art work should be commissioned by Affordable Housing and Healthcare Group (AHH) who constructed the building.

This exhibition records in photographs, drawings, plans and objects the work and collaboration between all the parties involved with realising the sculpture. It celebrates Taunton, and the county of Somerset, with it’s glorious coloured stones and it’s quarries at Capton and Ham Hill: it show the skills and creativity of sawyers and masons, metal workers and engravers: of designers, photographers, crane drivers, builders and bosses at the construction company AHH, and recognises the support of our local Council, and the people here at CICCIC.