Collective worked with Simon and Tom Bloor to create a viewing structure to look into the City Observatory site while it is in its initial stages of development. Simon and Tom Bloor’s collaborative practice focuses on our often ambivalent relationship to the construction and use of public space. Artist Robert Barker’s 1792 panorama of Edinburgh drawn from Calton Hill provided the basis for this new sculptural work. The panorama, captures Edinburgh at a pivotal point in its development, spanning from Arthur's Seat, taking in the Old Town, the emerging New Town, the busy port at Leith and finally the City Observatory site where the 1775 Thomas Short Observatory was under construction. As Collective redevelop this complex once again, the emerging built forms of the Short Observatory provided fitting inspiration for Simon and Tom’s structure as the site entered a new era.

Simon and Tom Bloor were born in Birmingham. Their works and projects explore the histories and fabric of the built environment and the associated dichotomy of creation through destruction. Creating publicly sited artworks is central to their practice; making art that moves beyond the gallery to offer social functions out in the wider world, producing their own small world of things within the greater one.

They have held solo exhibitions at Site Gallery, Sheffield, Whitechapel Gallery, London, South London Gallery and Modern Art Oxford. Public art projects include: temporary commissions for Southbank Centre, London, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and the Art on the Underground, London; as well as permanent commissions in Cambridge and London with Futurecity and in Bristol with Arnolfini Gallery/Bristol City Council. They are amongst the founding directors of Eastside Projects, Birmingham.

Part of: