WEEK 2 DAY 5 exhibit

Artist Meryl Ainslie joined Pop Up today and after recent trips around the old Regents Circus and Victoria Hill campuses of Swindon College she has made 2 luscious photo sequences of the old building and beautiful wax casts of the small and lesser seen parts of the building. 

For the Wiltshire Pop Up point of view read below;

DEVELOPMENT, DECAY AND DESTRUCTION

Visiting the derelict Swindon College buildings on Regents Circus and Victoria Road we respond to what we can and what we choose to see.  Each person will see a different world in the desolate melancholia or ecstatic joy which breathes out of every surface.

The 1890s Technical College is listed and will be saved while the 1960s annexe building will be demolished.  There might be a case to save them both but just as much of Victorian Swindon was laid waste to the trends and fashions of the 1970s now the most distinctive architecture of that time becomes dust.  Across the road seemingly sparkling in its newness is Swindon Library, the pride and future of the Borough we are told.

What evidence is there of the beginnings of the old Technical College, can we see anything of its original ethos or of the people who went there to teach or learn?  It seems the final users leave the greatest mark on a building.  Walking around the disused site there are signs of hard work and industry that would have formed the day to day of college life in the offices, workshops and broken equipment.  The alumni can hardly be seen, in the dereliction what we find are the things nobody wanted, abandoned artworks, textbooks and pages of writing.  The most striking images are left by the night time invaders who break security to wallow in vandalism and wrecking.  These people write their names up large, break doors and smash through wall panels. Exposing one room to another or to the outdoors where the world is less static and oblivious to the crunching of feet over the bones of the past.  Out of this seemingly wanton destruction there is beauty, a trail of paint, electrical fittings wrenched from ceilings and walls all have the wonder and charm of unrecognisable artefacts from an ancient Egyptian tomb. 

Do the wreckers really know what they are doing? Maybe, as they sign their names just as an artist might in the corner of a painting.  They use spray paint, marker pen and even their own shit.  Approbation they might never have had before, these buildings were for the benefit of the town but not the whole town could use them.  Those that were excluded can now climb through a broken window and say, ‘here at last’ and claim the place if only for a night.  Or do they resent a place they once loved being given over to the commercial interests of developers; are they angry that it is no longer theirs?  After all what harm is there in destroying a building which is waiting for annihilation?

Government departments will happily let their buildings go to ground and vandals help them in the process.  The power of destruction must be equally exhilarating to both.

Let us know what you think about the new development.