The last 12 months has seen the Bus Station’s future completely transformed

Preston Bus Station is to play a starring role in a new arts production by Nathaniel Mellors.

Mellors won the Contemporary Arts Society Annual Award in conjunction with the Harris Museum and Art Gallery.

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He gets £40,000 to create his artwork which is to combine fiction, sculpture, performance and film inside the Bus Station.

Nathaniel Mellors (centre) collecting his prize

Mellors said: “The support and faith in my work that this award represents is impossible to put a price on, particularly from such a strong shortlist.

“It is a unique opportunity to consolidate recent developments in my practice and pull out some deeper weirdness, both with my amazing collaborators and through the extraordinary locations in and around Preston.”

His work for the grade II listed building was supported by the Harris.

Alex Walker, head of art and heritage at Preston City Council, said: “We are delighted to have won the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums 2014 in partnership with Nathaniel Mellors. We are very excited to be bringing his imaginative commission to life in Preston. It will be a film that is rooted in its locality; linking Preston’s two most recognisable buildings, Preston Bus Station and the Harris Museum & Art Gallery.”

Cabinet member for leisure and culture services, councillor Veronica Afrin, said: “Nathaniel Mellors is a prestigious and fascinating artist, and we are immensely proud to be working with him on this major commission. His unique imagination and approach to film making will enable him to draw on and re-imagine the museum’s collections and the fabric of city, cementing Preston’s growing reputation as a centre for high quality cultural activity.”

The Contemporary Art Society shortlisted Mellor’s idea back in the summer and it has been a long wait to find out whether it would win.

Director, Caroline Douglas, said: “In a year with exceptionally strong applications for the Award, the Harris Museum proposal with Nathaniel Mellors was outstanding. Nathaniel Mellors’ work connects with a tradition of absurdist and satirical film making in Britain that includes such figures as Lindsay Anderson and Derek Jarman.
“I am delighted that the Award will enable the production of a substantial new work within Mellors’ oeuvre, and one that links so directly to the city it will be made in.”

It’s not the first time the Bus Station has been used as a backdrop, it was the setting for Journey to the End of the World in March last year – put on by They Eat Culture and Lancashire Writing Hub.