Jenny Steele
An Architecture of Joy
These works were details taken from artworks from Steele’s exhibition An Architecture of Joy, which considered the legacy of inter-War ‘Seaside Moderne’ architecture, such as the Midland Hotel in Morecambe and Pleasure Beach Casino in Blackpool, built during the 1930s leisure boom in Britain. Turning the Grundy’s Rotunda Gallery into a stage-set of sorts, the exhibition and this commission incorporate abstracted and repeated motifs drawn from the period, and attempt to revive the utopian optimism and restorative properties of seaside leisure. The pink image includes motifs taken from architectural details of Blackpool’s Winter Garden.