Quaystones, Cardiff

2001

This site in the heart of Cardiff Bay was in danger of becoming a neglected space, despite it providing an important link between the Welsh Millennium Centre, The Senedd and the adjacent retail and cinema complex. All the adjacent sites had their designers, but nobody seemed to be interested in this awkward site located directly over the tunnel entrance for the main road through the Bay. Previously, as part of my work as lead artist in part of Cardiff Bay I had identified the scope for an imaginative landscaping scheme on the site, utilising the many massive granite Quaystones that remained on the site. Over subsequent years CBAT (Cardiff Bay Arts Trust) continued to lobby for such a scheme, and suddenly in 2001 it all took off again.

The aim was to design as simple a scheme as possible to fit within budget and timetable, yet provide interest and meaning to the site.

I conceived of the scheme as a series of gently rising terraces formed by the Quaystones, encircling a grassed area through which a wide paved avenue connected the neighbouring keynote buildings. Cut into the paving are a series of motifs, half-sized versions of the hull templates of the collier boats that once docked beside the Quaystones. The curve of these templates is echoed in the curving trunks of hundreds of white birch that provide a screening backdrop to the arena and which were inspired by my work assisting David Nash to create his ‘Turning Pines’ at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, back in 1984.

Framing the site is a row of large-sectioned oak pillars, echoing the mooring timbers of the docks, with engraved text alluding to Cardiff’s coal trade, including specially commissioned words in Welsh by Menna Elfyn.

The title “Setting Out” refers to the templates once used to set-out the cross-sections of the collier boats, but also to the nature of a boat journey too. The Quaystones witnessed many such journeys: from local colliery trade to momentous last departures and first landings. The solidity of the massive stones serves as a striking counter-point to the nature of setting out on such journeys, the fleeting touch of hand, foot and rope.

Whilst those who linger in this space may make such connections, I also like the fact that the thousands of people who walk through the space each day are unaware that they are working through an artwork, yet respond to the setting. I enjoy the fact that my site provides a sanctuary in a busy urban context – notably, my design provides the only green space in the heart of the Bay.

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