FORECAST
2023
Permanent public sculpture made in collaboration with CAN, commissioned by Brighton and Hove Council, UK
Supported by Arts Council England
Forecast is a permanent public artwork by artist Felicity Hammond and architecture and ideas studio CAN. The art work has been commissioned by Brighton and Hove Council as the focus of a new civic space between the historically significant Portslade town hall and the newly built Victoria Road Housing Development in Portslade, Hove. The project is Hammond and CAN’s first collaboration.
For this public commission, Hammond and CAN have produced a cluster of three organic forms appearing as weathered sections of brickwork, washed up and castaway by the sea. The forms are made from cement mixed with an aggregate of waste bricks leftover from the construction of the new housing. Sited in the central civic space of the development, fragments of brick are revealed on the polished surface of the sculptures, mimicking the way that the tide erodes and smoothes industrial materials. The history of the site and its coastal location are embedded in the processes used to make the artwork, which references the local former brickfield and the polishing company that once occupied the adjacent town hall.
Holding the polished brick forms in place are a series of steel hoops, which at once blend into the aesthetic of municipal design yet also stand out, like a warning or a marker. The painted steel mimics the change in texture on the concrete forms, suggesting a rising tidal line; a hint at the challenges faced by coastal towns. Through this gesture, Forecast responds to the very nature of permanence in relation to public art, asking its audience not only to consider the material histories related to the site, but also its future form.
