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We were commissioned by Cathy Mager to design a permanent installation inside the newly refurbished Bristol Beacon, inspired by the building’s rich heritage.
We wanted to create an expressive, continuous, almost musical artwork with areas of light and shade, river-like fluidity and moments of fracture and explosion that entices the visitor from across the Lantern Foyer and when approached, reveals its stories hidden in the rich details.
The 14 meter story wall installation supports a series of printed polished plaster surfaces and integrated AV inhabited by the drawn line, leading you on the journey from the building’s opening in 1867 to the reopening November 2023.
Our role: Design / Illustration / Animation
Contractor: Scena Pro and Armourcoat
Graphic Contractor: Displayways
![231130_BeaconOpening_MelNorthover_[GiuliaSpadafora]-00001.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/649329a84517e0697a2f0495/1702645869280-MAO5KJINM72K7PGNWUK9/231130_BeaconOpening_MelNorthover_%5BGiuliaSpadafora%5D-00001.jpg){kind=tracking}
![231130_BeaconOpening_MelNorthover_[GiuliaSpadafora]-00004.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/649329a84517e0697a2f0495/454f95a6-633e-4dc0-a4b7-983b4211ea12/231130_BeaconOpening_MelNorthover_%5BGiuliaSpadafora%5D-00004.jpg){kind=tracking}
“The artwork by Mel Northover uses the drawn line to reference the excitement and energy of performance, interconnecting and evolving as it explores the Bristol Beacon’s story. Over 400 artists are featured: from the radical and raucous to the exhilarating and the poetic – and everything in between. These figures are interwoven with the musical movements and world events that shaped and influenced the Beacon’s history.”
Bristol Beacon
“The most important thing for me was to ensure that everything feels alive, almost continuously moving so, much like a piece of music, there’s a rhythm and sense of pace and moments of loud and quiet expression in the linework. I love exploring visual transformations to connect narratives together so there are themes of destruction that become resurrection, musical score transforming to become acrobats’ high wires, hundreds of band names travelling like sound waves through a sub stack, one influencing the next and so on – always moving forward.”
Mel Northover
Images: © Northover&Brown, © GiuliaSpadafora, © Colin Moody