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Jane Watt | |||||||||||||
| Wall of Letters This is a permanent work, commissioned by Land Securities with Christ’s College Cambridge in the centre of Cambridge. The work involves examining the nature of public and private space in the specific site of Christ’s Lane. It reflects on the scholarly activities on one side of the lane – in Christ’s College’s old and new libraries – and the daily exchanges that occur in this public thoroughfare that links Cambridge bus station and Bradwell’s Court. Wall of Letters is a large glass wall (5m high by 45 m long) that is covered in approximately 32,000 individual letters that form a word search containing 6000 words. Jane gathered individual stories and memories from people who live, work and pass through the Christ’s Lane area. These were then selected and broken down into lists of individual words. A specially designed computer program was developed with Dharen Kumar, an MA Computer Science student at Middlesex University, in order to generate the giant word search and its component letters. At night-time up to 100 words can be lit up. Each night a different combination of words is highlighted, animating the wall and its hidden stories. Wall of Letters is due to be completed in spring 2008. It will be the first major permanent public art commission in Cambridge. |
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| Postcard Journey Postcard Journey (2004) is one of two permanent works (the other is Button Wall) commissioned for the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital (RACH) as part of a Scotland’s largest public art project in a healthcare environment. It was funded by Scottish Arts Council (SAC) and the ARCHIE hospital fund. Postcard Journey was developed through postcard correspondence with over seventy hospital users and employees. They were each asked to nominate and describe a place near where they lived that they considered a landmark. Jane selected over forty sites to visit on a 1200 mile journey across the largest hospital catchment area in Britain. The landmarks were documented by photograph and text in the format of a postcard. Thirty lightboxes displayed the final images and words and aimed to capture the transient and visceral activities of hospital users’ voices, personal landmarks and Jane’s journey. |
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| A Taste of Summer A Taste of Summer is an installation/performance commissioned by Forces of Light Festival (1999), Helsinki. This annual festival aims to bring life and light to the streets of Helsinki in the cold, dark days and nights of November and December. Jane brought A Taste of Summer to the people of Helsinki for three consecutive nights; she gave out free ice-cream and pretend sunrays (UV light). Each night the white-clad figure wheeled her bicycle and cart to a new location in the city. She put up her parasol, switched on the UV lights and gave out a taste of summer, creating both a striking visual spectacle, as well as a participatory artwork. The work was also performed at Art2000, London. |
 photo: Tom Boll |
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Impact of Networking Impact of Networking (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: a-n The Artists Information Company, 2006) is the second of two evaluation and report publications that Jane researched and wrote on the impact of Networking Artists Network (NAN). The first publication is Reflections on Networking (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: a-n The Artists Information Company, 2006). NAN is a nationwide initiative set up by a-n The Artists Information Company in 2003 with additional funding from Arts Council England (ACE), Scottish Arts Council (SAC), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and European Social Funding. Evidence from focused interviews with eighteen artists, three advisors and funding officers is presented alongside quantitative analysis of NAN’s records and statistics. Impact of Networking was an evaluative document that specifically aimed to analyse the efficacy of NAN through the artist’s experience of networking practices. The report examined good practice in networking artists’ networks and suggested future directions for NAN’s scope and methodology. Both this and the previous report were published and distributed to over 32,000 artists nationwide, and used as discussion documents for future artist network policy. [www.a-n.co.uk] |
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