Community Servers: Obelisks of The North
Anna FC Smith and Kerry Tenbey
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Published by Corridor 8 in Northern Formations, 2022.
Northern Formations is a collection of responses by writers and artists to the unusual proliferation of sculpture across the North, through history and in the present day.
funded by the Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council England, Leeds Art Fund and Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
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Smith and Tenbey's essay explores how obelisks sited at market places around the north of England act as community servers connecting mundane life across time and locations. The artists researched locations of the obelisks to create a visual chart. The work includes an incomplete snapshot of the histories of some of the obelisks, demonstrating a few key events that indicate the monument’s centripetal role as sites of community activity, social history, and ritualistic behavior.
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