I was recently invited by METAL to customise a beach hut that would be on display for three weeks, alongside 19 other beach huts, on Liverpool's waterfront by the Albert Dock. My brief for the project was to create a design that was a direct response to a question given to me by Wayne Hemingway. The question he gave me was:
BUSINESS = OFFSHORE TAX AVOIDANCE + FAT CATS X INVESTMENT BANKERS ?
My concept for the hut was to paint a balance of good and bad words associated with business, presented in a way that resembled how you would work out a complicated maths sum. I spent three days locked away in a huge warehouse painting it and couldn't be happier with how it looks. Thanks to Jenny Porter and everybody else involved with making this happen.
Liverpool Beach Huts – a waterfront encounter between business and alternative thinking
Saturday 11 June – Sunday 3 July 2016
Along the Liverpool Waterfront the Beach Huts project will animate the International Festival of Business across a three week period. Providing a celebration of British Culture, new technologies, art and DIY enterprise. The Beach Huts will be occupied by artists, designer-makers, poets, performers and entrepreneurs. They will become stations for a series of performances, participatory workshops, conversations and ideas.
There will be a mix of different huts stretching from the site of the festival to the main thoroughfare of the Strand (the Strand is the old English word for beach). This location will attract festival delegates and the general public to find out more about what Liverpool and the North’s creative industries has to offer.
Each cluster of Beach Huts contains a selection of new creative commissions; a showcase of creative industries from the Northern Powerhouse cities (Hull, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield), a series of new artworks responding to the themes of the International Festival of Business, performance huts, and community huts.
The Beach Huts have been inspired by the following themes from the festival: creative and digital economies, technology, manufacturing; sustainability, and energy and the environment.
Each mixture of huts will contain items, images and activities that will inspire delegates and entertain passers-by.