The huge Spectra artwork towering over the Castlegate looks like an alien spaceship that landed overnight.
However, TOGETHER wasn’t beamed down from outer space – it was carefully and lovingly built in the heart of the Granite City by the creative team from Lucid Creates.
Work began on this spectacular large-scale installation last Saturday and – as our timelapse video shows – five days later it was ready to burst into glorious life for a Wednesday night preview, before Spectra officially opened on Thursday.
It was a big job – as you can see – from constructing the four towering steer pillars to carefully putting into place the three giant rings.
The end result – the height of a three-storey building – is one of the biggest attractions of Spectra and has drawn crowds since the festival began.
Designed as a place to bring people back together
Constantly glowing and shifting in colours, the inside of the rings are a constant array of words and phrases – all contributed by local people to reflect their experience of the pandemic and hopes for the future.
Chris Carr, the artist who created TOGETHER with his partner, Helen Swan, said: “We designed this piece as our response to Covid.
“What we strived for was bringing people back together, because we really missed that.
“It has different texts and words, different stories from the local area and we hope it creates a space for people to gather and talk about their experiences.”
TOGETHER is just one of the stunning pieces which will be on display in the heart of Aberdeen for Spectra.
Others range from Gaia – a giant floating planet Earth in Aberdeen Art Gallery, with its companion piece, Museum Of The Moon, in the Music Hall – to colourful and musical Trumpet Flowers on Broad Street.
To find our more about the festival, which ends on Sunday, visit spectrafestival.co.uk