SEPTEMBER 2022 · PATINA
See Monster. Weston Super Mare
Weston-super-Mare seafront, Somerset, England
A decommissioned North Sea gas platform doesn't belong on an English seaside beach. That's the point. SEE MONSTER ran September to November 2022 on the Weston seafront — the platform transported from the North Sea, repainted yellow and orange, fitted with a waterfall, a rooftop garden, walkways, a viewing platform on the helideck. The scale of the thing from sea level is genuinely surprising even when you know it's there. Two visitors standing at the base look proportional to what the structure would have been relative to the sea.
From below you get the underside of the platform: orange equipment, yellow structural supports, multiple levels of steel at angles to each other. The industrial logic of it is still visible — this wasn't designed to look at from underneath, it was designed to work. The repurposing makes that readable in a way that active use wouldn't.
The scale of the thing from sea level is genuinely surprising even when you know it's there.
Weston-super-Mare seafront — September 2022
On the helideck, chain-link fence edges the viewing platform. Through the chain-link, binoculars — someone looking at the coastline or the town, using the height that the rig provides, the platform fulfilling a version of its observation function.
The waterfall runs down the side of the structure: fresh water over industrial steel, the yellow SEE MONSTER signage above it. Against the cloudy Somerset sky it reads clearly. The rooftop garden on the upper level has real vegetation growing in containers on what was working infrastructure. The contrast is specific and deliberate.
From a distance, looking back toward the town: the platform rising above the beach, Weston-super-Mare's coastline behind it, the ordinary domestic skyline of a seaside resort making the scale of the structure even more apparent.
The yellow paint is the loudest thing on the beach. It was probably the loudest thing in the North Sea too.
Yellow SEE MONSTER signage and cascading waterfall on industrial platform structure
Orange equipment and yellow supports viewed from below, industrial platform architecture
Full gas platform structure against cloudy sky with vegetation and yellow supports
Hands holding binoculars viewing platform through chain-link fence with industrial structures
Towering steel framework and rooftop garden against dramatic clouds, seafront gas platform
Multi-level yellow and orange steel structure with stairs and walkways in natural light
Platform on beach with two visitors below, showing monumental scale and concrete wall
Platform viewed from sea level, industrial tower against town coastline in background