£50,000 to pave way for Hockney showcase venue

CONSULTANTS are being paid £50,000 to work up proposals for a waterfront arts and exhibition centre in Hull showcasing the work of David Hockney.

Hull Council has earmarked the old Bonus Electrical site near the River Hull for the venue, which has stood empty for more than five years.

The councillor leading the project, Coun Steve Bayes, believes the project could help make other developments a reality, including relocating the city’s cruise terminal.

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Coun Bayes said: “The consultants [David Powell Associates] are doing some basic models, looking at how big it would be, comparing it to other places in the country which have done similar schemes. Size and scale are fairly important.

“We did look at the old Pepis site, but that is not big enough and would obscure too much of the vista of the Marina.

“The next stage at some point in spring will be to see [David Hockney] with the designs and say: ‘In principle do you like this? Is this something you would put your name to or not?

“If he says yes it will probably start some kind of design competition which I would like him to be able to judge.

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“If he says he’s going to put his name on it, he should have input into the design.”

Coun Bayes, who met the artist last year at the opening of his hugely successful A Bigger Picture exhibition in Bilbao, which celebrated the unspoilt beauty of the Yorkshire Wolds, said the Arts Council was aware of the project, but it would be financially much harder to stack up without the artist’s involvement.

“The key thing is that he could have said ‘no’ and he hasn’t,” said Coun Bayes. “The thing we don’t know is whether there’s anyone else doing something – we might be in a competition that we don’t know about.”

The councillor is also keen on moving the cruise terminal to the city centre.

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Studies commissioned under the previous Lib Dem administration showed it was possible for cruise ships to berth and turn round in the vicinity of The Deep aquarium, he said. The drop-off point would be just a short walk from the proposed Hockney centre, on Blackfriargate.

Coun Bayes said: “If you have a Hockney gallery you would have a destination for people to come to from the cruise terminal.

“There is nothing realistically we can do to get people to spend more money in the shops. So by getting more people in, you fill the shops you have and hopefully open some new ones.”

The gallery, he said, would explore the history of art and articulate Hockney’s theories including his belief that the Old Masters used optical lenses – effectively photography without the chemical fixing – to help create many of their paintings.

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“You would have the opportunity to put in things like camera obscuras and things like that,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Hull Council said: “The specialist work will look at how the proposal for an iconic arts and exhibition centre could be delivered in this location to drive the wider cultural-led regeneration of the area.

“The work includes a detailed economic feasibility and viability assessment to support the development of the building and the associated public spaces on the site identified. It also includes work to identify how the project could be funded, including the long-term revenue requirements and potential income that could be generated.”

The artist has various homes, including in Bridlington, which he has used in recent years as a base for forays into the Wolds and his memorable paintings of trees and tree “tunnels”. Hockney’s Bigger Trees Near Warter, a mammoth painting spread over 50 separate canvases, drew more than 63,000 visitors to the Ferens Art Gallery in the city in 2011, smashing previous records.