When The Red Rose in Lancaster
Polly Checkland Harding
Taking the county symbol of Lancashire and twisting it through language from an object to a moment Steve Messam’s When The Red Rose transforms the familiar and everyday. Popping up around the county this Autumn it has formed an overhead canopy over an everyday alley Preston; embraced a short-boat on the Leeds Liverpool canal and engulfed a Victorian shelter on Blackpool prom like a glowing beacon.
This time in a hidden garden in central Lancaster it is a mass red rising, hovering fleetingly over an abandoned, lost space before ascending into the night sky.