6. Philip Spark

Parramatta river shopping trolley arch, 2008

I was born and brought up in the north of England ,an area steeped in engineering tradition .Despite wanting to be an actor my first jobs after I left school were in civil and then mechanical engineering .
I became a bicycle mechanic and then a blacksmith my sculptural work reflects this background. The combination of necessarily strict engineering rules (gravity and so on) with a very none standard building block is at the heart of this project. It’s hard to know at this early stage what the product will be.

The title is self explanatory, an arch made of shopping trolleys that will span the Parramatta River. The shopping trolley is a ubiquitous part of consumer society, as necessary as delivery trucks and shelving. To quote a supermarket representative” “Shopping trolleys are provided to assist our customers to conveniently transport their purchases from the store to the car park and then return them to specially marked shopping trolley bays”.

What a lovely idea. Shopping society has at its periphery a few problems and a very minor one is the inability of some shopping trolleys to get back to their specially marked bays. The sight of lost trolleys is a common one. Whether temporarily stranded at the edge of the car park or lost forlorn and rusting in a derelict storm drain there is always a shopping trolley near by.

The Parramatta River, as it goes through the central shopping district has undergone a transformation. The river itself runs through a wide concrete channel but the banks have been landscaped , foot paths and lighting improved, a park created. A lovely spot a perfect compliment to the shopping world that surrounds it. There are of course shopping trolleys in the river.

The trolley arch project has as its goal the real, actual arch. To get to this a number of levels have to be got through including structural design, finance, manufacture and installation. Each level produces product, drawings, photographs, begging letters, souvenirs and finally, perhaps, the thing itself.