Massive Attack or George Michael? It was an odd question to turn over one sunny afternoon in the space-age surroundings of the Pod at National Glass Centre.
Two artists were pitching for the commission for a permanent and high-profile light installation as part of the £7 million refurbishment of the platform level at Sunderland’s main railway station. Both had previously provided the light shows for international tours by big names in music – but did we go with Massive Attack, or George Michael?
It was a big decision. Sunderland had recently seen the re-introduction of direct intercity trains to London, alongside Northern regional services and the local Tyne and Wear Metro. Nexus, the public body which owns the Metro, was working with the City Council and other partners. Our watchwords were: A world-class gateway to an ambitious city.
Art commissions – three in total – were going to be the key to re-inventing the forboding underground space we had to work with. That was seven years ago, and I think we got it right. Jason Bruges Studio, the winning bidder, created the award-winning 140-metre Platform 5 running the length of the station platform.
Ghostly shadows gather one by one behind a glass wall, standing or pacing back and forth as impatient passengers do, until vanishing with each passing train, only for a new combination of figures to slowly reassemble. Look closely and you spot a parent with a pushchair, someone leading a dog and another with an instrument case. The images real local people (they must smile inwardly when they see themselves now) recorded round the corner at The Place and fed into a computer that sends them out in endless, ever-changing combinations.
Jason’s work, completed alongside demanding commissions ahead of the London 2012 Olympics, is one of three interventions by artists threaded through the station. Between them they showcase the potential of art to transform environments, and sum up the ethos of a city willing to be adventurous in its cultural ambitions, while not losing sight of its heritage. The light wall relies, like much of the station’s design, on glass to make it work – echoing a heritage embodied by the National Glass Centre across the Wear.
Opposite Platform 5, quieter perhaps but in no way overshadowed, is Found – a commission of 41 images by photographer Julian Germain, taking genuine items of lost property from Metro’s store placed back within the carriages and stations where they must once have been dropped. Toys, phones, exercise books, fake tan (and yes, someone really did leave a set of alloy wheels) hint at the life stories of the people who left them behind – another kind of ghostliness.
Found places intriguing art where on any other station you would expect to find only advertisements. It seemed fitting it should be created by a photographer based in the North East as familiar for his work with major corporate clients as his artistic projects.
You have to look a little harder for the final commission – Morag Morrison decorated the glass panels which conceal the station’s administration and service buildings with what might first appear to be abstract photographs. Closer inspection reveals the very fabric of a train journey blown up to giant – the tactile studs of a platform edge, the fabric of a seat cushion, the overhead power lines and a stack of free newspapers waiting to be picked up.
Sunderland station represented the biggest series of commissions in the 40-year history of Nexus’ association with public art. The commissions at Sunderland station also proved a catalyst for engagement with young artists and writers in the city. Found inspired a story and poetry-writing competition based around the items depicted. We’ve also hosted a series of temporary visual art ‘disruptions’ within the Park Lane bus station, and even hosted a flash mob of dancers from Sunderland College on board a train.
The City of Culture bid is a further inspiration as we continue a programme which brings the everyday user of public transport in contact with art where they least expect it.
Shortly after that light wall was switched on a delighted passenger tweeted: “Wow – when did my city’s station turn into a Kylie video set!?” We were very pleased, and she was nearly right. Not Kylie, in fact, but George Michael.
Hew Lewis, Corporate Manager for Customer Services and Communications at Nexus
8th June 2016
