Rose Nolan
YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW

YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW is an open, pos­i­tive and bold text-based propo­si­tion for peo­ple to con­sid­er as they move through the por­tal of Hal­lam Station.

It is a play­ful, col­lec­tive and uni­fy­ing refrain that draws on the notion of shared jour­neys and the expe­ri­ence of trav­el and move­ment, using the lit­er­al con­cept of trans­port con­nec­tions (ele­vat­ed par­al­lel tracks, shared plat­forms, timeta­bles) to con­sid­er the more abstract idea of con­nec­tions to peo­ple, place, cul­ture, past and present.

Embrac­ing mate­ri­als, colour, scale, and typog­ra­phy YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW, draws atten­tion to the per­ma­nence and phys­i­cal­i­ty of the station’s rail infra­struc­ture by util­is­ing the under­side of twin con­crete U‑troughs. The bi-direc­tion­al nature of the commuter’s trav­el – city bound and back again — is reflect­ed in the repeat­ed phrase run­ning along both U‑troughs, in oppo­site directions.

The char­ac­ter of each word invites explo­ration – between image, word and loca­tion. The look of famil­iar words YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW may prompt recog­ni­tion, while the whims of typog­ra­phy or graph­ic design alter not only the look of these words but also their con­ven­tion­al mean­ing, use and asso­ci­a­tions for the view­er. The slip­page between word and image is ampli­fied along with the viewer’s under­stand­ing of the ever-shift­ing nature of this rela­tion­ship. Each return vis­it offers a dif­fer­ent or new expe­ri­ence of the work.

Seen on approach from the street and carpark YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW func­tions as a sign, beck­on­ing com­muters into the cov­ered fore­court and up to the ele­vat­ed city-bound train plat­form. Scaled up and giv­en sta­t­ic form these words are re-con­tex­tu­alised and assigned new mean­ing. Each hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal ele­ment builds on anoth­er so that let­ters and lan­guage pro­vide the visu­al and mate­r­i­al struc­ture to the work, that is open in atti­tude and archi­tec­tur­al in scope.

YOU/ME/US/HERE/NOW acknowl­edges the dai­ly pas­sage of com­muters as they move through space and time, tran­si­tion­ing between pub­lic and pri­vate worlds. It takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the beau­ty and lan­guage of the archi­tec­tur­al design, the acti­va­tion of pub­lic space and the sig­nif­i­cant role the new Hal­lam Sta­tion will play for the community.

Pub­lic Art Com­mis­sion, Hal­lam Sta­tion
Lev­el Cross­ing Removal Project, South East­ern Pro­gram Alliance with Has­sell
Curat­ed by T Projects