"My name is Claire Irving. I trained as a performance artist working in avant-garde art, working in London and touring Europe before I moved to Leeds and got involved in contemporary visual arts. I’ve lived in Harehills for 25 years. I was only going to come for a couple of years and ended up staying here because I loved it so much. I love the people, the diversity and the sense of community. I think it’s a kind of hidden gem, Harehills. I truly believe that we are a very rich area of the city that has so many variables within it, of people and what they’ve done, where they’ve been, and what culture they bring with them.
I gradually moved within the visual arts circle and reconnected with Kerry Harker, an artist I knew from years ago. She shared her idea of establishing a visual arts organisation in East Leeds, an area with little cultural infrastructure but home to many phenomenal artists. Kerry started the conversation on East Leeds Project in 2017, and I joined in 2018, and we made the organisation official in 2019.
We often walked around East Leeds, talking about creating artworks that would travel to people in their own neighbourhoods. We discussed how wonderful it would be to observe the sky, and we thought, what about a mobile observatory? It would be an observatory as well as a piece of art that we could take to the people. After discussions with LEEDS 2023 and Smeaton300, we secured funding to create this work.
We commissioned artists Heather Peak and Ivan Morrison to create Moon Palace, inspired by the legacy of civil engineer and astronomer John Smeaton. Moon Palace is a 55-seater school bus transformed into this beautiful piece of art. She has a telescope on board and a huge hatch at the top so you can look out to the stars. We also have a radio telescope so you can hear the stars and see the movement of space above us. Moon Palace is a gift from East Leeds to the rest of the world, so that people can come on and experience the magic but also have a space for conversation, on everything from how we observe the sky to how we observe each other and the world around us."
Photo captured by @charlesemerson_
