Coldstones Cut

 

Coldstones Quarry is a North Yorkshire limestone quarry almost entirely concealed inside a hill (Greenhow Hill) and unobservable from passing roads. In 2006 Heidelberg, the operators commissioned a public artwork from artist Andrew Sabin to provide a trio of spectacular viewpoints of the quarry activity. It was constructed and opened in 2010. Access is from the B6265 between Pately Bridge and Skipton. Follow this link for otherwise unobtainable views of the totality of the scheme. A strong wind blew in our faces as we made the short but steep path from the car park to the summit where it intensified. Limestone dust particles sand blasted our faces as we struggled to hold a cameraphone while the wind threatened to whip our glasses off. The narrow approach to the viewpoint is a classic piece of compression, arrow straight between walls of massive stone blocks. About two thirds along the way there are branches to left and right offering a spiral climb to elevated platforms. Arrival at the viewing apron brings panoramic views over the entire quarry workings. And all the special pleasure of observing the exposed limestone terracing and heavy machinery in action.  Sabin’s sculpture work is often highly coloured with a biomorphic presence and doesn’t immediately connect with what we see here until we consider his interest in containment and release along with the organic spiral forms. Aerial views with the viewing platform at the base echo the phallic presence of the Cerne Abbas Giant. Only 15 to 20 years of reserves remain after which it is planned that the quarry will revert to its ‘natural state’.

Walala Parade

Leyton is a mainly Victorian terraced, residential district of Waltham Forest. It has a lower league football club with a long history and a modest record of achievement but major landmarks are few and far between other than a late Victorian Library and Town Hall complex built at a time when Leyton was still an Essex town.  Not far from the Town Hall, on the opposite side of Leyton High Road is a parade of shops and small businesses bookended by a tent making business and a Kwik Fit, now home to a community-funded public art project that extends across eight individual properties.  After several years of fund raising and planning it was completed in Summer 2020 by Walala Studios to a design by artist and urban designer, Camille Walala.  

There’s a rhythmic rectilinear grid filled with areas of high intensity colour, overpainted with a repetition of geometric forms, diagonal stripes and a scattering of more fragmented shapes.  Observers have noted the influence of Memphis and South African township decorative art.  There are some echoes of post-comic book mid period Roy Lichtenstein and the industrial geometry of painters on the fringe of Abstract Expressionism such as Al Held, Burgoyne Diller, John M Miller and Leon Polk Smith.  More delicate sensibilities than mine have complained about a lack of refinement but I’m at a loss to imagine just what an exercise in visual refinement could bring to an urban environment of this character.  However mediocre it may look, it does function as a place of economic activity. For me it’s enough that it gives us something better to look at than the surrounding townscape - a passing contact with a fleeting visual delight with an intent to uplift.  Depressing to note that taggers have left their odious signatures in at least three places.  I would have those art world halfwits who, decades ago, affected to take this vandalism seriously, conscripted to remove every last trace of it.