Saturday 26 May 2012

When E.W.D. Hurst raises his arm, we follow...


...into the bowels of the Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds. To the university's secret place: the cemetery. And even into Ellie's bedroom in the Henry Price Halls of Residence!

We met E.W.D. Hurst on the iconic Parkinson Steps and were given our special exploration pack and a new name:


We had all responded to a call out for intrepid explorers and turned up on the steps with our "pocketful of dreams" (E.W.D. Hurst) ready to brave the hazards, hidden dangers and lurking monsters secreted away in the nooks and crannies of the campus. And, of course, to be impressed by all the extras who had been placed around the campus in order to make it appear authentic. As you can see in this photograph of actors in the cemetery pretending to enjoy the sun after a hard week of exams:


We even had special pop-up actors - not extras because they had speaking parts - who pretended to be research fellows from the geography department. This one called himself Andy Turner and while it looks like he is wearing a tablecloth, it is the original flag from the first North/South pole expeditions... apparently:


Our exploration took us to a number of artworks around the campus. Some by the BA Fine Art students, but also some by guerilla artists. The image below shows us looking at a pop-up gallery in the Brotherton library, and below that is one of the more spontaneous installations:



We had a great afternoon in the sunshine with the entertaining and enigmatic E.W.D. Hurst and also met a fabulous group of people all with pseudonyms which our leader, amazingly, seemed to remember. We got to blow whistles, set off party poppers, applaud random groups of people and had a thoroughly good time!

This is Curly Richardson, at the university, signing off!

Related Links:



2 comments:

  1. Hurrah Curly, thank you for giving me some relief :-) I have managed to cut corners and my related post has major versioned to 1.0.0. Here follows a link to section in which a specifically mention and link to your good work:
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/14p73GqQBGT8m3PVEXS92FBUHpaRPJ7CRHz0icOVpMAc/edit#heading=h.87w9ybm41law

    Happy musings to you all.

    That flag may be the first to fly at the north and south poles of many a planet and moon in our solar system. It may even explore further in some form or another...

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  2. Particulations28 May 2012 at 08:04

    Hey Andy. I like your updated account of Edy's work, especially the bit about being open minded about art. I really appreciate your links to my work, too. I hope you have a good week. I'm off to uni today to meet someone who has some old photos of the campus post slum clearing but pre building the 60s precinct. It looked like a bomb had landed there. Curly.

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