The Train Track and the Basket

The Train Track and the Basket was a site-specific public artwork commissioned by Hull 2017 UK City of Culture as part of Look Up, a programme of temporary artworks created for the city's public spaces. Installed across the arched entrance windows of Hull Paragon Interchange, the work explored the phenomenon of transmigration and the movement of people, materials, skills and knowledge along transport routes.

Between 1848 and 1914, more than two million people passed through Hull, arriving by ship from mainland Europe before travelling by train to Liverpool and Southampton, where many continued their journeys by sea to new lives in North America. Many remained in Hull for only a matter of hours. This extraordinary movement of people through the city ended abruptly with the outbreak of the First World War.

The window designs considered migration not only as the movement of people, but also as the movement of making traditions. Many migrants carried their belongings in traditional baskets, and basket-weaving patterns and techniques found in North America can be traced to traditions brought from northern Europe. The imagery within the work drew upon these woven structures, alongside references to basket-making materials, the plants and seeds that migrate along railway tracks, and the distant destinations of those who once passed through the station.

The architecture and continuing function of Hull Paragon Interchange were integral to the work. The constant flow of people entering, leaving and crossing through the station became analogous to the process of weaving itself: individual routes passing over and across one another, temporarily intersecting before separating and continuing elsewhere.

Situated on the station's windows, The Train Track and the Basket connected this contemporary movement with the journeys embedded within the history of the site, considering how people, materials and knowledge travel together and how new cultural patterns emerge through their movement.