04 Jun 2025
Uncover Victoria Park's lost bandstand site with The Storm Cone
The site of Victoria Park's lost bandstand and its buried past can be explored like never before through an immersive new digital artwork.
Experienced through personal devices, The Storm Cone is a unique sound and augmented reality artwork which has arrived in Portsmouth.
This breathtaking work by artist Laura Daly features newly commissioned music composed by Lucy Pankhurst and eight sound works by Daly. Visitors can 'move around' a life-size augmented reality bandstand at the city's lost bandstand site in the centre of Victoria Park.
Using The Storm Cone free app on a phone or tablet, visitors will experience the last musical performance of an interwar brass band and trace the journeys of the departed musicians through the eight sound works.
The Storm Cone was originally commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection and Metal, revealing the lost bandstands of Peel Park, Salford and Chalkwell Park, Southend in 2021.
It has now been transported to the city as part of Portsmouth City Council's restoration and revitalisation of Victoria Park as the 'People's Park', made possible by a £2.4m grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Council Leader Cllr Steve Pitt said:
"The bandstand was an original feature of Victoria Park when it opened in 1878 as the first public park for the people of Portsmouth. Bandstands were hugely popular attractions in Victorian Britain, but like many others, Portsmouth's was lost sometime before the outbreak of the Second World War.
"This new art and sound experience is a truly unique way of uncovering Victoria Park's lost bandstand and learning about their cultural significance to life at the time."
The Storm Cone was recently a finalist for the prestigious international Lumen Art Prize. It charts a story of loss, celebration, human strength and fragility.
It tells of the break-up and reshaping of communities during the interwar years and is named after Rudyard Kipling's 1932 poem The Storm Cone, which has been interpreted as a forewarning for the Second World War.
The Storm Cone can be experienced in Portsmouth until 30 September, using the free app which will guide users to the artwork. Headphones are recommended for the best experience.
The Storm Cone was commissioned by Salford University Collection and Metal, with financial support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and additional support from Salford School of Arts, Media & Creative Technology, PN Daly Limited and Zinc and Copper Roofing Limited. Laura Daly is supported by The Artists Agency.
Laura Daly and curator Lindsay Taylor will be in conversation on Tuesday 16 September, 2-3pm, at The Green House Community Hub in Victoria Park. Get Tickets.
Contact Information
Stephen Pickthall
stephen.pickthall@portsmouthcc.gov.uk
Notes to editors
Laura Daly is a multi-award-winning artist who creates site specific and site related artworks that range significantly in scale. She exhumes the past and teases out fragments of the forgotten using a variety of media, including sound, drawings, mapping, video and material objects. This archaeology of lost time is rooted in in-depth research, where evidence, trace or suggestion generate a haunted exposition of our surroundings. Local stories and people also contribute. Fusing together history, memory, myth and story, Daly’s immersive artworks capture a particular kind of longing that resides within the threshold of absence (known as saudade in Portuguese and hiraeth in Welsh).
Award winning composer, Lucy Pankhurst has received many accolades for her work. She became the first female composer to receive a British Composer Award in the Brass/Wind Band category for her piece ‘In Pitch Black’ (2011), which was also the first brass band work to win a BCA. Her music is premiered and commissioned the world over including the IWBC Philadelphia/Seraph Brass, the Brass Band Aid Project/Prairie Brass of Illinois, the BBC Free Thinking Festival and the Ageas International Salisbury Arts Festival. Large-scale commissions include the Durham International Brass Festival (Pathways - 2015), the Woodhorn Museum, Northumberland and the Sage, Gateshead, a residency at the IWBC in Philadelphia (2017), and Salisbury Cathedral (Voices from No Man’s Land – 2014). This work also featured as a sound installation at Women in Sound/Women on Sound 2015. Site/performer-specific works include Sekhemti (solo trumpet) and Cristallum Calvariam (violin/voice) at the British Museum/RNCM Sound Histories event 2013.
The University of Salford Art Collection is an ambitious and growing collection of modern and contemporary art, founded c.1968. The collection aims to support excellence in teaching, research, community engagement and artist development; and actively acquires new work through a ‘commission to collect’ approach.
Metal provides innovative, multi-disciplinary residencies and development opportunities for artists from the UK and overseas, from spaces in Southend on Sea, Liverpool and Peterborough.
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