Tunnel of Love (2013)

 

We headlined last year’s Shimmer light festival with the major new installation the Tunnel of Love held inside the iconic Spanish City dome building.  The Tunnel of Love referenced the Dire Straits song of the same name along with traditional ‘dark rides’ of early fairgrounds and involved a 30m heart-shaped tunnel filled with lighting effects, bespoke videos (showing archive footage of the Spanish City fairground in its heyday) and an ‘audio-sculpture’ made from narratives of local people we interviewed talking about why they love Whitley Bay.

 

You can read more about Tunnel of Love on the Shimmer website and for a trip down memory lane, why not view our the archive footage we used as part of the installation?  You can hear some of the local people talking about why they love Whitley Bay accompanied by vintage postcard images here and edited archive material of Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music), Eric Burdon (The Animals) and Richard Hamilton (artist) here.

 

The wonderful archive footage we used was supplied with kind permission of Frank Gillings home video: ‘Whitley Bay, Spanish City’ (1967), BBC documentary: ‘Fair Fortnight’ (c. 1977) and Channel 4 documentary: ‘Without Walls Special – This is Tomorrow’ (1990s).