Ray McKenzie, Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art explores the growing array of public art along the banks of the River Clyde and comments on the impact of these new landmarks on the waterfront.
It is hard to put an exact figure on it, but there are by my
calculation at least a dozen significant works of sculpture that
have been commissioned recently as a result of the regeneration
programme that has, for the past decade, been transforming the
river Clyde and the 30-mile stretch of riparian landscape it passes
through.
There is no centralised policy to control or direct the
commissioning process, but it is underpinned by a general
recognition of the important role public sculpture can play within
the wider pattern of economic regeneration, both as an embodiment
of social and commercial aspiration and as a catalyst for further
change. With the initiative coming in every case from
independent local projects, the results are predictably varied in
terms of scale, style, materials and approach. There is - or
at least there ought to be - something for everyone.
Landmarks from the river
Many of the new works are big enough, and striking enough, to be
seen from the river itself, and so fulfil public sculpture's
historic function of providing a clearly visible and instantly
recognisable landmark. My own favourite example is Toby
Paterson's ebullient Poised Array, which tames the
geometric austerity of David Chipperfield's post-post-Modernist BBC HQ on Pacific Quay
with a multi-coloured abstraction as joyously irresponsible as a
child's plastic windmill. At five and six metres high
respectively, Jephson Robb's Change at Clyde Gate, and Andy Scott's
Rise, installed only a few months ago in
Meadowside Square, provide equally eye-catching statements, while
clearly celebrating in their imagery (chains, propeller blades) and
fabrication techniques (welding, casting) the heavy industries on
which the river's historic greatness once depended. An
earlier work by Scott, his fibreglass Shipbuilders at Braehead, is
an even more explicit tribute to a vanished industrial past.
History at Clyde View Park
For those who are lucky enough to have access to an appropriate
form of water-born transport, all these can be taken in and enjoyed
as part of a leisurely cruise down the Clyde. But there is
plenty more public art to be discovered along the various walkways
and cycle tracks that run adjacent to the river's edge, and which
can be examined at closer range. The largest concentration of
work is at Clyde View Park, also at Braehead, which combines a line
of eight small sculptures mounted on pedestals by Kenny Munro, with
a two-figure group by David Annand entitled The Writers
(Omega). Once again there is in both cases a recognition that
we cannot escape our history: David Annand's writers inscribe a
poem by Colette Bryce characterising the present as a moment in
which the future and the past are held in suspension; the objects
on Munro's pedestals include a miniature steam engine, the Renfrew
coat of arms and a portrait of the pioneering aviator Winifred
Drinkwater.
By the waterfront
The use of sculpture in the context of transport systems -
including public footpaths, roundabouts, motorways, airports and
railway tracks - has burgeoned exponentially in recent years, with
results ranging from high-profile projects such as the Angel of the
North, which dominates the A1 at Gateshead, to the more modest
sculpted 'waymarkers' that punctuate the literally thousands of
miles of cycle track commissioned by SUSTRANS all over the
country. But the association with waterways goes back much
further. The most famous sculpture in the world is surely the
Statue of Liberty, which has been greeting visitors to New York as
they pass through the Upper Bay into Manhatten ever since it was
erected in 1886. But even this mighty work, standing at
almost fifty metres high, is a mere statuette compared to the
figure that was referred to with wonderment in the Ancient World as
the Colossus of Rhodes, the largest sculpture known to history and,
as maritime landmarks go, the daddy of them all.
Rivers are roads that move, and carry us whither we desire
to go.
This beautiful aphorism by Blaise Pascal encapsulates everything
that is fascinating about an historical watercourse such as the
river Clyde. For those among us with itchy feet it speaks of
unknown destinations and the romance of what lies beyond. For
those with a more philosophical turn of mind it distils the paradox
of an object that is in perpetual flux but has remained in the same
place since before recorded time. As we enter another phase
of the river's long and mysterious history, it is already clear
that sculpture, in all its myriad forms, will have its own part to
play in the regeneration we have been waiting for and dreaming
about for so long.
Ray
McKenzie
Research Fellow in the Forum for Critical Inquiry
Glasgow School of Art
9 February 2011