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To Build a Community

Joseph Hillier

The Paddock

The sculpture – To Build a Community – shows a head under construction. The surface is a tessellating pattern of red and blue header bricks similar to many of the town’s buildings. Over 50 Watlington residents volunteered to have 3D scan portraits of them engaged in activities they participate in or their working life. A selection of these have been turned into small bronze figures which are embedded into the sculpture. Depicting how the act of building a town is a group endeavour.

Do you recognise anyone?

The artist, Joseph Hillier, spent three weeks in Watlington meeting a wide variety of residents. Commenting on the experience he says:

“What it takes to build a community like Watlington isn’t one individual, it is a group venture with all these different bits of society coming together. That’s what I noticed most in Watlington: this amazingly active community coming together to do things and that’s something I’ve rarely witnessed anywhere else.”

About Joseph Hillier

Joseph Hillier is a British Artist, raised in Cornwall who has lived and worked in London, New Orleans and now Northumberland. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors and has created over twenty public works. His work is an exploration of our humanity, relative to the geometry and constructs of contemporary culture. Hiller re-makes the human body in various materials and via ancient and recent advances in technology, framing his figurative works in the current culture of things.