The history of this story began in the year 2000 in the city of Preston, Lancashire, when I started the 515 contemporary art group with my friend and fellow artist Des Butler. In 2001 we received £5,000 from the National Lottery, ‘Awards for All’ programme for the 515 project.
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The 515 art project was a great success and led to the involvement and collaboration of over 200 artists and the opening of ‘Oyston’ art studios for 12 residential artists on the 3rd floor of an old industrial mill in Ashton, Preston.
Also a number of major art exhibitions throughout Preston city center:- ‘Apparition’ ~ {Interventionist Art {Church Street}. ‘Lost in Space’ ~ Interventionist Art {Winkley Square Park}. Miller Arcade I. Miller Arcade II {Empty retail premises ~ Fishergate}. Burtons I. Burtons II. ‘The Writing on the Wall’ {Former Burtons clothing retail premises ~ Fishergate}. All of these exhibitions were free to the general public where we had over 10,000 visitors.
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Further developments was the opening of our own contemporary art gallery in Oyston Mill in 2003, which we called ‘Room 107’. Over 20 exhibitions and art installations, involving over 400 artists, took place over the following two years. All the exhibitions and events were free to the community of Preston and the general public.
In 2006, we also created a new contemporary art group called ‘NOMADS’, as part of the 515 project {Paul John O’Hara, Alexander James O’Hara. Julie Massam. Barry Norton. Jack the ‘Beard’}. We succeeded again in obtaining another £5,000 National Lottery funding for this project in 2007.
Refer to NOMADS section of this website for further details.
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Throughout this time and the many creative, Preston community art projects I was involved in, I was also continuing to develop my own personal art research and practice with respect to the number 515 and its clear and evident links to ideas relating to intelligent design, sacred geometry, teleology, Universal Consciousness and GOD.
To date, I have now been working on 515 for nearly 25 years and I would like to thank all those artists and people who have supported us and been involved. It has been an amazing journey of discovery so far. As I continue to develop my ideas and more knowledge unfolds and esoteric secrets are revealed, they will always be shared freely an available to all people on this 515 website.
