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Date: 2017 - 2021

Location: Bristol, UK

Project: Public Art Commission

Partners: Bristol City Council, Cabot Learning Federation, Department of Education (DfE), Fusion Facades, Elliott Construction, Gabion Surfaces, Minerva Primary Academy, RASKL, Sto, The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), TwinFix

Artist: Toby Paterson

We were delighted to work with internationally acclaimed artist, Toby Paterson, developing numerous integrated site-specific works for a large-scale capital works project - Minerva Primary Academy in Hillfields. Paterson’s award-winning work encompasses gallery and museum exhibitions, temporary and permanent public commissions and cross-disciplinary collaborations featuring paintings, reliefs and structures which explore the relationship between abstraction and reality. The forms and ideas inherent in architecture inspire his work, responding to the design and spacial experience of cities.

Commissioned as part of a series of permanent contemporary art commissions for Primary Schools in Bristol, the most significant programme of commissioning art for educational contexts in the country. The artist has realised a series of nine interrelated works throughout the new school. The integrated artworks introduce unexpected, playful dimensions to the environment by transforming ‘off the peg’ objects and structures, which marry an over-arching visual context, representing the Shift in Perspective that education can offer. 

The ambitious commission is an integrated pedagogy scheme augmenting key features in unexpected ways where the artist has developed a new sculptural entrance canopy, tactile privacy screens, printed polycarbonate roofing for a secondary canopy, a series of large-scale wall paintings to aid orientation, a complete structural trompe l'oeil render scheme, 3D signage strategy and a new school mascot which has been incorporated into school uniforms, book bags, and letterhead, derived from a series of Jesmonite sculptural ‘owl’ forms which harmoniously achieve a distinctive, welcoming atmosphere positively impacting the children and community’s experience of the school and the wider neighbourhood. 

A visual artist of international repute, permanent public works have been commissioned for BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow (2007), Warwick University (2008), and in the South West area of The Hague (2013). Paterson has also developed expansive works for the Docklands Light Railway’s Stratford International Extension in London (2012) the Dunfermline town centre in Fife (2014), and the Bunhill 2 Energy Centre in Islington (2019). His Hatton Gallery Pavilion toured public sites in Newcastle and Gateshead in 2017. In 2002 he won the Beck’s Futures Prize and in 2006 a Creative Scotland Award. In August 2022 elements from Paterson's 2017 Edinburgh Art Festival project were permanently installed on the city’s Canongate.

Toby Paterson is represented by The Modern Institute in Glasgow and Lange Pult in Zurich.

PONY successfully negotiated a 5% spend of total build budget to fund the artworks and developed a Public Art Strategy to incorporate nine integrated works throughout the scheme. The £8,500,000 development is funded by The Department of Education.