Moshi Moshi, Bartholomew Square
& The Regency Town House
Skip - David Batchelor (photo: Bernard G Mills)
Brighton Palermo Remix - David Batchelor (photo: Bernard G Mills)
A newly commissioned work Skip is sited outside Moshi Moshi in Bartholomew Square, providing a city centre presence of a major commission throughout the festival. The skip, an everyday object found on the street is a readymade for Batchelor. Here a skip is transformed into something which ‘hums’ with its local environment, exploring colour through the hues of neon and artificial materials of the urban environment.
The skip is a commonplace object of every town and city and rarely gets a second glance. Here the skip is given a glowing makeover with the addition of delicate neon tubing that traces its dented contours. Skip quietly glows by day and rather less quietly at night in Bartholomew Square.
Brighton Palermo Remix
5 – 27 May, Wed to Sun 12.00 – 18.00
The Regency Town House, 13 Brunswick Square, Hove, BN3 1EH
free admission
For this HOUSE 2012 and Brighton Festival co-commission, prompted by the festival context, Batchelor is working with a specific form of traditional street festival illumination that he first encountered in Italy two years ago. His commissioned work is also in part a response to the architectural period details of The Regency Town House, a Grade I listed Terraced house (1824-28) designed by Charles Augustin Busby.
Domestic scaled wooden structures adorned with coloured lights are sited within the formal rooms of the main house, the parlour, dining room and drawing rooms.
Brighton Palermo Remix makes a connection between two quite different coastal towns and is a development of the artist’s long term interest in forms of street decoration and illumination.
Related Works
5 – 27 May, Wed to Sun 12.00 – 18.00
The Regency Town House Basement, 10 Brunswick Square, Hove, BN3 1EH
free admission
Alongside the new commissions a selection of work is to be sensitively sited in The Regency Town House Basement, an extraordinary domestic setting, that still echoes its past, in a warren of servants quarters and rooms. Here Batchelor’s work will have interplay with the character of its surrounding environment, providing moments of both subtlety and brilliance.
Works to be included are a combination of 2D and 3D works including the complete Found Monochromes series shown as a projection for the first time in the UK, Idiot Stick, white works including White Blob and White Parapillar and a selection of various table top works sited in the former Regency servants kitchen.
David Batchelor
1955, Born Dundee, Scotland
1973–75, Foundation Course Watford College of Art
1975–78, BA (Hons) Fine Art, Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham
1978–80, MA Cultural Studies Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies – University of Birmingham
Lives and works in London