More details about the sponsors and groups that are involved with the Arcades Project
Across Britain it is recognised that artists and art are often indicators of potential urban development; they move into cheap, often run-down areas until they are priced out by increasing confidence in the local economy. However, this analysis doesn’t sit well with the way g39 relates to its near neighbours and immediate locality. The area is fast changing under the growing shadow of St David’s 2 - a vast commercial reinvention of the city centre - and the diminutive Victorian arcade is facing its second challenge in two decades (the first was the threat of demolition in the 1980s). In the face of such a dramatic change the local community are bound together by a sense of expectation, and the dialogue between local business owners has increased: complaints about the building work, reminiscing about what has been demolished. It is an exciting, if bewildering, time of change.
This residency project aims to build bridges for dialogue through the intervention of an artist. Retailers are bound up in the here-and-now, and are as swift to adapt to change as they are to obliterate trends or uneconomic practices of previous incarnations. Entering into discussion with current residents can generate a sense of history and, just as crucially, a sense of lineage can be encouraged in the local area. This will ‘embed’ the gallery as part of the history of the area as well as performing a key role in writing and mapping the history of the arcade at a specific point in its existence.
Chris Brown. g39