Making the North East Hum

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY OF: Lingfield Point

Darlington’s Lingfield Point is proud to unveil HUM! by award-winning artists Frances Crow and David Prior who work together as Liminal.

Liminal is a collaborative arts practice, which recently won the prestigious 2010 PRSF New Music Award (At £50k the richest arts prize in Britain) for its proposal The Organ of Corti.

This is the first image of the second year of ‘Futurescope’ a two-year-long sequential, outdoor exhibition of eight massive circular photographs and images displayed on the eastern elevation of the Powerhouse building at Lingfield Point. The structure is 45 feet in diameter and clearly visible to a wide cross section of Darlington’s residents and visitors at the new gateway to the town.

Frances Crow explains more about the thinking behind HUM! “Futurescope is an exciting and different project, marrying art and a former factory building in such an innovative way. As a collaborative arts practice that explores the relationship between sound and the environment, the Powerhouse and the circular image hanging on it immediately reminded us of an over-sized loud speaker. This, together with the image of the inside of a megaphone became the catalyst for HUM!"

“As the Futurescope project has developed we noted that the image of the ‘Beeman’ made links to Paton and Baldwin’s original corporate logo of the beehive.”

“When we were asked for a name for our image, < I>HUM! became an obvious choice. Firstly, it is an onomatopoeic word for the sound that the turbine hall would have made; it is also the sound bees, which have been introduced to Lingfield Point as part of its sustainability ethos, make and also the description of the busy workers who would have been employed in the building at its peak.”

Lingfield Point is a unique 107-acre business park created on a landmark historic industrial site next to the world’s first railway and previously home to Europe’s largest wool manufacturing plant.

A £100 million masterplan will see the creation of a flagship sustainable mixed community built around the existing business community providing up to 1200 homes, sports facilities, a school, healthcare facilities and public green open space.

John Orchard, director of Marchday Group, owners of Lingfield Point said: “The thinking behind the very large image of the megaphone cone fits perfectly with the past, present and future of Lingfield Point.
“This is a far more challenging image than previous Futurescope photographs, but we are proud to secure a piece of work from one of the most exciting and innovative organisations in the arts at the current time.”

Christian Barnes, director of Vista Projects, along with landscape architect John Kennedy has been the creative force behind Futurescope.

Christian said: “This is a great opportunity to procure a high quality piece work of artists of the first calibre who are at the point of establishing and securing a national reputation.
“For the next three months people will be able to see the iconic image, and whether they love it or hate it I am certain it will provoke discussion.”
www.liminal.org.uk,