Unsettled Ground by Hilary Jack

Unsettled Ground is an outdoor, citywide art installation of architectural models of cotton mills, back to back terraced houses, tower blocks, mansions and halls which reference the architectural decline and rise of the two cities of Salford and Manchester.

Acting as both a public art work and as functioning nesting boxes for bird and insect populations negatively impacted by the fast pace of regeneration in the city.

Hilary Jack said “The title of my work, Unsettled Ground, suggests something topographical, as well as hierarchical – an uneven playing field, an unfairness in society. For this commission I reference the repeat cycle of degeneration and regeneration, what is saved, what is lost, and how human and animal communities are shaped by a complex web of policies, politics, cultures and ideologies in the name of progress.”

Find them outside: The Whitworth, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Castlefield Gallery, HOME, Hotbed Press, Islington Mill, and Paradise Works.

Commissioned by GMCA for A Modest Show; the official collateral contemporary art event for British Art Show 9