Golden Terrace
As part of a project proposal and development that was taken to technical design stage and planning, artist and sculptor Brigitte Jurack, observed the grid-like pattern of the revealed basements of the terrace streets. Her project led to an investigation of the history of the terrace clearances and the lives of people living in industrialised Manchester in the terraced street whose foundations remain buried deep beneath the current Birley site.
The annexed Stories From The Hearth workshop resurrected memories of members of the Hulme History society about life in the terraces, fire and fireplaces, which was to be etched onto two tall chimneys fabricated of gilded sheet metal and steel sections to form the outline shape of a terrace house.
The sense of community was reinforced by threshold steps where passers-by were encouraged to dwell, sit on and ‘chat’ as neighbours might.
Proposal and development
‘once the demolition rubble had been removed, all that was left to recall the lives of thousands of people was the grid-like layout of the streets’ (p.157, Sebald, The Emigrants, tr. Michael Hulse, London: Harvill, 1996)
For Sebald the trauma of destruction and rebuilding [of the Manchester terraced streets] gains the dimension of a natural disaster, and he observes that the anticipated ‘clean start’ is […] hampered by personal and collective history. Neil Scott’s ‘People of Hulme’, or Mary Jordan’s ‘Hulme Memories’, small local publications that seek to capture the rich and complicated history of lived working communities in industrial manufacturing Manchester echo this sense of loss.
Now, on the Birley Site, the faint outline of the grid-like layout of the streets have been built upon again, with the optimism of a new generation and their envisaged futures.
The artwork Golden Terrace seeks to function as a catalyst, bridge and space to connect to a particular past and to many potential futures. Here, through the process of symbolic gilding (the gold representing the special, precious, inheritable, and long lasting) a now distant past has been made precious and becomes an outline - part of the present and the future.
It is planned that the original grid of the original street layout from 1900 will be used as a guiding principle to site the Golden Terrace(s). Staying within the original scale of the original houses, the sculpture will allow current users of the site an instant image, of ‘what it feels like’. Whilst the house is re-instated as an outline, I wish to make the threshold steps solid, since many images of the time show people and children sitting and standing on the threshold to view the world.
Planned programme:
Engagement (community and students)
Engagement will have three phases:
Phase one: planned engagement in the run up to the design and the installation phase
Phase two: planned engagement after completion
Phase three: unplanned, organic engagement
Phase one: Workshops with Hulme History Society and artist to understand life in the terraces and their dimensions and types; to gather stories, quotes, memories in order to design texts that will be powder coated into the surface of the frame. Workshops with students or schools to reflect on their understanding of housing then and now. Opening/Launch day: ‘tea in the parlour’ – performance sketch by either amateur dramatics or BA Fine Art students.
Phase two: (planned engagement after completion) Open air events and workshops can be held inside the structure of the Golden Terraces. These could be readings, tea parties, history and memory activities.
Phase three: (unplanned and organic engagements) Thresholds are for sitting on, and I anticipate that people will just simply sit on the thresholds, and lower structures of the steel frame to chat, look into the world and to be.
The lower levels of the frames may also become incidental play/climbing structures and consideration should be given to the ground below the structure.