The curators’ group of 12 Russian Arts Museums made a rich two-week’ tour of Great Britain’s art-grounds by the invitation of the Russian Branch of the British Council in November 2005. Besides the direct acquaintance with the art situation of the leading creative world power, the program elaboration of modern art exhibitions that the British Council is ready to bring to Russian museums was the aim of the trip.
The trip plan consisted of two parts: first of all, having divided into three groups the curators left for different parts of the United Kingdom for 5 days: Siberians left for the North-West of England, Ural museums’ workers went deep into the central part of England, the curators’ group from the central part of Russia visited Scotland. In the second part of the trip all groups gathered in London and devoted time to the study of the capital artistic life.
(for more detail about the trip see: www.britart.ru/ru/trip)
The voluminous photomaterial was accumulated as a result of the acquaintance with the life and activity of creative cultural institutes and spaces (they managed to visit 24 grounds). This material provided the basis for the exposure project of visual and informational “art-preparation” of the Russian cities’ audience for direct communication with the modern British art.
300 photographs, arranged in the form of the original album-collage consisted of 32-meter panels, represent the report from the events’ places, into which, besides London, such dynamic cities as Gateshead, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Walsall and Henry Moore’s patrimony – Perry Green estate, entered. To date the exposition has been exhibited already in four cities of Russia – Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk.
The author of the project Sergey Kovalevsky represents his project by the invitation of the editorship “The 60th Parallel”. In this issue we publish some texts devoted to two English neighbor-cities – Gateshead and Newcastle. The author’s choice is specified by the whereabouts of the icon of the modern cultural policy – the Angel of the North in this place.
The Angel of the North
The 500-ton crane lifted and erected the biggest work of art of Great Britain on the pedestal on the knap in the north-east in February 1998 nine years ago precisely. Thus Gateshead town council’s four-year efforts for realization of the brightest project of the innovational program “Art in social spaces” were completed. The price is 800.000 pounds, 70% of which were covered by resources of the National Lottery Fund.
Strategically thinking authority staked on creativity and culture in the rehabilitation of the depressive miner's district Tyneside. About 30 art works in the town space are realized by now. The mighty and effective cultural complex is built on the wharf of River Tyne. The reconstructed granary BALTIC – the biggest exhibition center of modern art in Britain (after London) and Foster Sage – a new three-hall concert complex are included in it. Gateshead’s development program is accepted to be an exemplary one.
“The Angel of the North” became an icon of rehabilitation movement of regional viability, a symbol of cities rescue by creative cultural programs.
Its author Antony Gormley (born in1950), the British sculptor of world-wide reputation, was chosen from the short-list in 1994. In the same year he became the laureate of the prestigious Turner Prize (his angel guarded him). By that his sculptures were placed in several towns of Albion and in Norway, Germany and Japan as well. The chief problems of his creative work are connected with the body language, manifestations of internal stress on the skin. At that the artist’s body, plaster casts of which he uses as a mould, is a prototype for sculptural objects. The author managed to “take out of him” an angel metaphor in case of Gateshead colossus.
It should be noted that the usage of archetype of divine host became relevant again in the art of the end of the XX century. It is enough already to remember personification of God’s messengers in “Wings of Desire” by Wenders that we have read in some reader-books. The work of Gormley, who although uses a figurative language but sets problems from within it by minimalism and abstraction, is also devoted to visualization of that person whom nobody has seen.
The project of winged icon object at the entry to Gateshead distinctly appeals to the history and memory of the place. 20-meter “Angel” is placed directly over the desolate mine. It symbolizes hope materialization of miners who cut coal in pitch darkness for 200 years. The spirit evoked by the artist broke free out of the ground to light as a “thing from internal space” of the instinctive.
From the other hand its specific weather resistant Cor-ten steel, containing a small amount of copper sounds as a metaphor of transition from the industrial epoch to the informational one. “Angel of the North” is a hymn to imagination power, a materialized event of inspiration, whose energy nourishes not only former miners but also all motorists going by the route A1 day after day. It is a symbolic changes generator of the former problematic region.
54-meter wings, slightly turned forward (for 3,5 degree), overshadow reaching artificial fields in front of it – former excavation dumps, planted of greenery in 1980s. The author achieved “the feeling of embrace”, perfecting the skill of a body gesture that transformed into a man-caused wing of the glider as a result.
Superhuman arms-fans repeat the horizon line keeping all landscape. At the same time they hover over the surface arousing the feeling of flying. The angel is also a rope-walker balancing in space in that rare case when power of sky and ground concentrate in dynamic equilibrium.
The ribbed frame of the figure – flat bars made of 50-milimeter steel, transmits the image of naked as if devoid of skin, mystic flesh. Open tense “muscular” tissue resounds with rain, wind, sun and snow. “The anatomic school-book” for one who wishes to fly ensued. It is not far from the subject of cross torments concerned associations. A non-literal, constructively articulated version of the Christian drama of the Crucifixion favorably distinguishes “North-England” case from one-dimensional “South-America” one realized in Rio de Janeiro.
From the other hand, dispersing from the torso as ripples in the water webs on the wings express also ambivalent nature of the essence called into being: it is not only the spirit of light but spirit of darkness as well. May be hymenopterous subterranean creatures can be taken positively after the citizens’ familiar friend Batman. Perhaps there is a quite productive Anglo-Saxon begetting tradition of the biggest artistic phenomena from cave space – it is enough to remember such a creative point on the underground map of Britain as Liverpool club “Cavern” where a Great North-England Four came out from.
In the mornings the biggest angel in the world casts its ideal shadow on training football fields behind its back. At that moment athletic art energy must evidently inspire and support the status of the most advanced national championship for football to date. But for now only the team of Newcastle – an eternal neighbor-rival from the other bank of the river Tine plays in premium-league.
On the Bank of the Tyne.
Today the creative region Tyneside stands on two foundations-cities divided by the River Tyne – Gateshead and Newcastle. To our measures it is one city but this is a British tradition where two banks of the river are the separate municipal units. Though Newcastle is considered to be the administrative center of the region it is Gateshead that has taken the lead in architectural and cultural innovation recently. After the Angel of “all” North just by the millennium the city council managed to accumulate investment for the powerful town-planning ensemble appearing in the place of the port industrial zone in sight of the city-neighbor.
The BALTIC was the first one who appeared on Gateshead wharf. It is one of the most ambitious centers of international modern art in Great Britain and what is more - in all Europe. Today it is the biggest exhibition complex beyond London. At that the originality of building context imparts special coloring to it – it is situated in the former granary.
The BALTIC was opened in July 2002 and almost a million of people visited it for the first year. The center’s square is more than 3000 square meters of artistic space including two restaurants, café and a shop.
The BALTIC represents the program of short term exhibitions unlike traditional art galleries with permanent collections. The extensive list of educational arrangements of the center is intended for people of all ages and abilities and offers groups and individual innovation-oriented people to become closer to art.
The BALTIC represents the dynamic program changing exhibitions, events and projects, suggesting something new to visitors every time.
It has big creative achievements in its not large history – it was famous for the action that was very model for strategic “cultural” PR programs. The creative London artist Anish Kapoor who had realized his biggest installation by that moment was invited as a curator of the future center in a two-month pause of the elevator reconstruction building works when all internal space of near 40-meter height was cleared from parting walls. The voice of the huge red trumpet Taratantara, setting a pace and standard of the coming changes, sounded in a huge empty building frame.
The new concert complex Sage built by Foster Architects Company’s project is situated near the BALTIC on the same “futuristic” wharf. The effective winding appearance repeating the river wave has enough place for all citizens to walk.
The unexampled architectural and engineering structure – the Millennium Bridge projected by the architectural company Wilkinson Eyre (that got RIBA Stirling Prize for this project in 2002) connects pedestrian embankments of Gateshead and Newcastle. The elegant construction prolonging pleasure of walking over water has a unique ability to turn simultaneously both span arcs for ships pass.
On Blue Carpet
Newcastle City does not fall abreast of its neighbor Gateshead and also aims at satisfying the city space with non-ordinary art-objects. At its time “the Angel of the North” inspired here the brightest environmental innovation which the pedestrian square in front of Laing Art Gallery is. Blue Carpet was opened in 2002 by the project of London designer Thomas Heatherwick. The space was unified with a single surface using tiles, developed for the project over four years, consisting of blue glass from recycled Harvey's Bristol Cream bottles set in white resin. The surface articulates around trees and distorts as it meets buildings, and is perforated around bollards and peeled back to form benches. The square's trees, imported from Germany and Holland, were the largest ever imported and transplanted in this country.
The studio also designed a new staircase into the square, a spiral of laminated wood fabricated in situ by a firm of traditional Tyneside boat-builders.
Heatherwick is successful in his plastic experiments. His effective ventilation sculpture in Paternoster Square in London near St. Paul Cathedral became famous. The vents' form developed from folding a sheet of A4-size paper to create a form which, when scaled up to the height of a three-storey building, retains the proportions of the A4 sheet. (www.thomasheatherwick.com)
He made a huge weathering steel “hedgehog” tall as a twenty-storey building and weighing 180 tons, symbolic object-structure “B of the Bang” on the square before Manchester United Stadium.
Defining the museum creativity quantity of Tynesides citizens one can mark out the special program of young British “artists” support (Laing Solo) at the beginning of their career in Laing Art Gallery. Annually the gallery publishes a catalogue and places the show-room at the disposal of three authors who wins the contest of the expert-artist Mark Wallinger. The “airy” exposition the Unexplained Incidents by the young artist from Brighton David Miles became the one of such not large but bright exhibition projects of the end of 2005. Hanged on invisible lines graceful black silhouettes reacting to visitors’ breath immerse into the world of potential threat and misfortune. They are as if a visual illustration to the Beatles’ classical song Yesterday whose words about suddenly pendant shadow of yesterday become an appropriate refrain to hanged sorrows. Light breathing materialized by Miles actualizes also the idea of English tradition: Dickens’ spirit soars here.
The perfect installation quality is mobiles’ constant motion-rotation, changing of their silhouettes and also shadows that they cast on white walls.
