Aspire

WAVEparticle was commissioned by Irvine Bay URC to create 5 new artworks as part of the re-development of the town-centre, which were installed between High Street and the new steps of Trinity Church.

The Aspire sculpture, also known as the Trinity Mirror, is located close to the new steps at Trinity Church in Irvine town centre. This sculpture is 9m tall and its form is based on the striking spire of Trinity Church, the main feature in Irvine’s landscape. The sculpture is made of a highly reflective stainless steel, with ‘shards’ of the sculpture, placed in the new ‘green’ areas in the surrounding development. The base of the Aspire sculpture features a fantastic circular ‘groundwork’, extending in a 3m band, consisting of water-jet cut granite letters, forming a reversed text that is readable when reflected in the highly polished surface of the sculpture. 

This connects the eye and the body to things only seen at a distance, literally and metaphorically bringing the striking elements of the Church into the heart of everyday life in Irvine town centre. The inverted cone is also a play on a 17th century anamorphic optical illusion, whereby a cylinder placed at the heart of a drawing turns an abstract drawing or an inverted text, into a readable image.

WAVEparticle set up a temporary studio in the Rivergate Centre in Irvine and invited local residents, schools, groups and individuals, to focus on the changes taking place in Irvine, connected to the aspirational process of building and regenerating. The activities in the Rivergate studio over a 6 month period, included everything from building large cardboard models of the spire of Trinity Church, to generating the text for the ‘groundwork’ around the base of the sculpture, to include key places; names and dates; quotations from poems and stories; from years of Irvine’s history!

Not only is this a striking piece of contemporary sculpture but it has an undeniable relationship to the site. It balances four elements – a truly spectacular impact on the eye, a strong conceptual link to its immediate surroundings and an optical play from close-up and a complementary ground based work.

The remaining two artworks are A Line Runs Through It – a timeline of dates of significance to Irvine. The line is 4 bands of colour of granite, with the dates waterjet cut, and 3 bells – the decommissioned bells from Trinity Church reclaimed for the town centre and displayed on 3 separate granite plinths.