The need to bring new meanings and narratives into the Urban Place at the new entrance to Central Middlesex Hospital was identified in the arts strategy for BECaD. In now and then, the lead artist for BECaD, Sue Ridge, has proposed that the site’s palimpsest is made manifest, providing a literal physical order which can hold significant moments of personal exchange in the hospital or site’s history. This theme has been developed with the hospital designers, HLM, and through discussions with the hospital trust and hospital workers.
now and then is a series of interventions which bring attention to the palimpsest of the old hospital buildings. Significant lines which outline the spaces in the former hospital building of importance to the hospital community, underlie the new landscape, setting up sites for intervention. These lines and spaces will be marked with a series of works which will use cuts, symbols, lighting and text to expose what lies beneath. These marks are to work at different scales, and to work day and night: the overall patterning of the floor can be read at a distance, from rooms overlooking the urban space, and close up, by people walking through the site or relaxing in it. Lighting will allow the work to continue to be read from adjoining buildings after dark.