Developer Alumno has commissioned a new sculpture garden and poetry installation curated by Birmingham’s poet Laureate, which is being unveiled at the new Pershore Junction purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) scheme in Selly Oak, Birmingham.
Located on Dogpool Lane, Pershore Junction comprises 127-beds and has been designed by architecture firm Howells. Arts Curator Matthew Jarratt worked with Writing West Midlands to engage Laureate (Casey Bailey) to write the poem entitled, ‘In motion’.
“This poetry is about a journey. I know this area around Dogppool Lane well and spent my youth around here.
“I came to the site to write the piece, it’s full of different roads and junctions and places to travel.
“I felt that ‘In motion’ reflects the lives of the students living in the new building itself, they are starting a journey or maybe ending one and their lives are constantly in motion.”
Laureate/Casey Bailey, Poet
It will featured in the poetry garden and will first be revealed at the launch event in the foyer of the new PBSA development. The poem has been cast using materials which relate to the historic rolling mills in the Dogpool Lane area by sculptor Russell Coleman who has also produced three sculptures for the buildings’ courtyard.
“Once upon a time I made gravestones, they marked the lives of people past. The stone and carving of letters were just the medium to convey and mark a life.
“Nowadays I celebrate the stone itself each sculpture is a conversation with a found boulder, in a process of shaping and polishing i try to bring out the form and shape dictated by the stone.
“The gilded facets celebrate the cracks, scars, and cleaving that the rocks have incurred on their journey through earths mantle to its present form. Like us the rocks are on a journey to dust, only they take Aeons to do it.
“I feel I have beautified part of their journey.”
Russell Coleman, Artist
The sculptures relate to Birmingham’s history of jewellery making and the area’s history of heavy industry, ‘yellow metal’ production and rolling mills.
Russell’s sculptures combine polished stone with gilded surfaces and they sit on his ‘Total Waster’ plinths which are case from recycled blast furnace waste and recycled glass and plastic.
