For the past year I’ve been working on the Lincoln Castle Revealed project under the design lead of Ralph Appelbaum Associates. It’s a huge project with a budget of £22 million, so along with the gallery redesigns there’s new build too, including a purpose-built vault to house an original copy of the Magna Carta.
Lincoln Castle is not short on history ... William the Conqueror built the first castle on the Roman remains of a fort. During the civil war it saw the Royalists overwhelmed by the Parliamentarians – they rampaged through the city, finally billeting in the Cathedral along with their horses. There's a Georgian/Victorian prison too which used the fascinating 'separate system' where prisoners were isolated from one another. This may not sound unusual until you see the prison chapel ... each of the pews is a series of single seater wooden cells where the prisoners couldn't see over the partitions to their neighbours – their only view was forced upward to the pulpit. And then there's the Magna Carta too of course, which is 800 years old this year.
As for my work, I’ve been swimming in retouching, artworking, sampling, proofing, typesetting, technical specs and elevations as well as project managing my work flow, liaising with researchers, architects, fabricators etc. I'm working on around 175 individual graphic pieces in a variety of materials (enamel, bronze, wood, scrim, slate, plaster) which range in size from A6 to 30 squ m. Alongside the usual design and artwork responsibilities, a large chunk of my role requires keeping in mind thousands of tiny unresolved details and pursuing each one to completion ... loose ends are not my friends. I’ll post more about my work and some shots once the site is open after April 1st.
In the meantime, take a look at the video links below to get a taste of the project:
www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/lincoln-castle-revealed/100256.article
(post by Tanya)