SHIPS in the SKY

Project Elements

— the gathering of oral histories about the building, collected by Untold Hull and Esther Johnson
— an artist film installation looking at the social history of the building
— a gallery exhibition to encompass the project research: inc. film, photography, oral testimonies, memorabilia and archive material
— a series of community engagement workshops
— events to discuss the varied strands of the project
— trails of architecture in Hull City Centre
— a series of publications

Project Background

“If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

SHIPS in the SKY is a social history arts project recording the many lives of Hull’s former Co-op and BHS building.

Looking at the effects of public art on peoples’ navigation and memories of the public realm, this research will lead to a collection of oral history recordings, an artist moving-image work, and an exhibition all focusing on the social history of the former Hull & East Riding Co-operative Society store (later a BHS), a post war modernist building in Hull city centre.

The building has had many lives – a department store, an indoor market, a dance hall, a music venue and nightclub. Memories of the building will be recorded from many perspectives – from store shoppers and employees, to construction workers, and recollections of gigs in the buildings Skyline Ballroom, later Bailey’s nightclub and then Romeo’s & Juliet’s.

See detailed project elements here:
TIMELINES
GALLERIES
MEMORIES

Central themes of SHIPS in the SKY include, Three Ships, the UKs largest mosaic, designed in 1963 by Alan Boyson and adorning the store front. In 1961 Boyson made a smaller interior Fish Mural placed in a corridor near the fourth floor Skyline Ballroom and a geometric sponge printed tile mural in the Skyline bar, which was rediscovered during R&D for this project.
Emphasis is also given to how buildings and associated public art can be crucial for civic place and memory-making, and geographical and historical local identity. For instance, the Three Ships mural has an explicit connection to Hull’s fishing and maritime heritage.

On closure in 2016, the building canopy acted as shelter for the homeless. Canopy hoardings now proclaim, ‘A Prime Opportunity in the Heart of the City’, as the building lays empty ahead of imminent demolition and redevelopment. After a long campaign Three Ships was granted Grade II Listing status by the secretary of state and DCMS in November 2019.

“Growing up in Hull, this unmissable piece of public art was formative in my love of modernism and wanting to study art. My Dad comes from a long line of trawler-men and seafaring folk, and during our weekly trip for fried egg sandwiches from Fletchers [a local deli] opposite the mural, he’d tell me tales of his first trawler trip at the age of 12 to Murmansk and beyond the Arctic Circle. Aside from an avid fondness for Boyson’s graphic modernist aesthetic, I associate the Three Ships with stories of fantastical voyages that began in Hull, and as a metaphor for where life might lead me; its destruction would break my heart.”
– Esther Johnson

Impact

The Ships in the Sky project website and social media accounts have been selected for archiving by the British Library UK Web Archive project