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Leeds College of Art & Design   2004/2005

Shaeron Caton-Rose

What is life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

Wayside Shrine takes its idea from the small icons placed alongside roads in some catholic countries. Whether one has faith or not, they offer the traveller ‘time out’ to take stock, be still, meditate and just be. In the context of the M62, a motorway that crosses some stunning scenery, the images on the shrines remind travellers of what is around them, so easily ignored in the pursuit of getting from a to b. In my project, a virtual journey is made via tourist leaflets and then video. Although there were viewers of the actual pieces, they were undocumented and uninvited. Which audience is more important? And if our experience of time alone is often mediated, how do we find personal space?

Wayside Shrine consisted of three stages. In the first instance, a tourist brochure was distributed to all major Leeds city centre venues as part of the Situation Leeds Art in the Public Realm Festival in May 2005. This offered the tourist an opportunity to read a fictional history of and an opportunity to view, shrines along the M62: these were, in fact, not actually there.

For the second stage of the project I made the seven shrines, to be placed, one at each of the service stations along the M62 in August 2005. They were constructed using resin casting with aluminium filler and wood framing and the images in each shrine were based on drawings of the M62 and its environs with a hole through which the viewing public could see landscape. This element of the project was made during my residency at Leeds College of Art and Design

For the final stage I have made a video piece showing a car journey from Hull to Liverpool, and vice versa, from the passenger’s point of view; stopping at each service station to view the shrines. The video depicts a speeded up journey which then slows down for the period of viewing each shrine in a split screen format, showing the journey east to west on one side and west to east on the other side of the screen. So far, this has been shown during Bradford Arts Trail 2006 and at Perambulator (New Work Yorkshire) at The Showroom, Sheffield June 2007.