Project update: Green light for permanent art installation on Morecambe's sea front

What's happening?
An artist's impression of how Chris Drury's Horizon Line Chamber will look in MorecambeAn artist's impression of how Chris Drury's Horizon Line Chamber will look in Morecambe
An artist's impression of how Chris Drury's Horizon Line Chamber will look in Morecambe

A stone art installation is to be built on Morecambe’s sea front after internationally-acclaimed environmental artist Chris Drury secured planning permission from Lancaster City Council.

What’s the background?

The installation - called Horizon Line Chamber - was temporarily installed at Sunderland Point in September as part of the Headlands to Headspace arts commission, which attracted 25,000 visitors. The permanent installation is part of wider work to regenerate the area and to celebrate arts in the local area.

What will it be like?

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The chamber, made from reclaimed stone, some from collapsed buildings in the area, will act as a self-contained projector for the world outside. A lens will be built into the sea-facing wall to turn this small oratory, shaped like an upturned boat, into a camera obscura.

An ever-changing, upside-down and divided circle (sea and sky) will be projected onto a white lime-washed interior wall. The community of Sunderland Point and stone mason Andrew Mason, will help build the chamber together with a new footpath and bird hide.

What do they say?

Susannah Bleakley, chief executive of Morecambe Bay Partnership, said: “The number of people visiting the Headlands to Headspace commissions in 2018, from within and outside the region, has demonstrated an appetite to engage with new interpretations of Morecambe Bay’s unrivalled landscape and millennia-long human heritage.”

She added that the new installation “will develop new experiences of an area rich in geographical complexities, forcing settlers present and past to respect and share space with the most extreme of estuary conditions and wildlife and a place of fascinating history.