Home from Home
Yate, South Gloucestershire
Home from Home by Bristol-based artist Jo Lathwood is the first project in a programme of temporary and permanent site specific artworks commissioned by Barratt Homes to support a new mixed use development in Yate, South Gloucestershire. The artwork is sited at the southern entrance to the Ladden Garden Village development off Leechpool Way, next to a new playground that opened in early September 2021.
Home from Home explores ideas around sustainability and shelter. It is a temporary outdoor art space for showing and sharing work, and a catalyst for creative activity. Designed by the artist for the use of local residents, it was constructed at the artist’s studio in Bristol and installed in August 2021. Home from Home was officially opened on Sunday 5th September 2021 to coincide with the opening of the new playground. The structure’s modular design was influenced by Yate’s 20th century evolution into a centre of manufacturing. Home from Home was created from repurposed waste material and timber offcuts from building sites, including the development itself and the Whirlpool washing machine factory in Yate. The artist held FACTORY, a public event at Spike Island in Bristol in 2019 as part of their Open Studios event. This began the process of preparing the offcuts to make Home From Home, with help from Yate Men’s Shed and hundreds of other members of the public.
Home from Home is hosting an engagement programme of creative events and activities, led by visiting and local artists and creatives while the artwork is in situ. You can follow the project on Instagram @homefromhomeyate . Events will include family days, workshops with hands on making, performances, walks, talks and exhibitions with artists from Yate and beyond. This programme funded by Arts Council England will be delivered in and around the Home from Home structure in association with project partner Yate Parish. This additional funding will enable three artists – Kayle Brandon, Phil Owen and Oliver Sutherland – to develop new site specific work inspired by the area and created collaboratively with local residents, including young people from Learning Partnership West. Home from Home will also host free public activities organised by the artist commissioned to deliver the second commission at Ladden Garden Village as part of the design development and research phase.
The development occupies 100 hectares of former farmland between the town’s outer suburbs and the more rural aspect at Yate Rocks to the east and Tanhouse Lane to the north. The development will result in up to 2,450 new homes, a new Community Centre and local centre with retail, a new primary school and employment space. It will establish new pedestrian and cycling routes and bridleways across the site, significant new public realm and open spaces including play areas and allotments. The development is due for completion by 2030.
The second commission has been awarded to artist and designer Phil Cuttance who will create a new series of permanent works in public spaces throughout Ladden Garden Village that respond to the area’s history of celestine quarrying. These creative projects enable commissioned artists to explore the physical landscape and heritage of the area and support the development of the creative infrastructure within the town. Key aims of the programme are to ensure that the approach supports best practice in public realm commissioning, and prioritises quality and innovation.
Suzanne was appointed by the project landscape architects LDA Design as their art consultant, to research and write the Public Art Plan setting out how this arts programme will be delivered, on behalf of Heron Land. Suzanne is now overseeing project delivery on behalf of the housing developer Barratt Homes. Curator Lucy Badrocke is overseeing the events programme.
About the artist
Jo Lathwood (b.1984) is an artist based in Bristol who makes sculptures and large-scale installations that respond to site, event, material or process. Her portfolio varies greatly in form, scale, context and method of production, encompassing temporary and permanent public art, exhibitions, drawings and studio-based work. She has built a meandering staircase that enabled an audience to touch the roof of a church, developed a way of making homemade lava sculptures and made natural inks from oak galls. Recent activity includes CIPHER, a public realm commission for Dean Street, Bristol, commissioned by Studio Hive (2020); Well Trodden Wrong Ways, a dual exhibition at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, East Devon, UK (2019); Getting There, solo exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton UK (2018); Curious Formations, TNA commission at Biddulph Grange, Stoke on Trent, UK (2017); and Is it magma?, a solo exhibition at Earth Gallery, University of Bristol, UK (2016). Lathwood was co-director of Ore and Ingot, an artist-led fine art bronze foundry in Bristol (2012 – 2019).