Sculpture - what’s the point?

You may not think of Wakefield as an artistic Mecca, but just a few miles south towards Barnsley there are 500 acres of beautiful parkland dotted with a several sheep and a cracking range of sculptures.

Last week was half term, and there’s only so much swing-pushing this aging uncle can manage, so by the Monday we headed off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Our aim was complete exhaustion of kids and cultural stimulation for grown-ups.  It may have ended up the other way round, but at least there were great muffins in the café.

My brother and sister-in-law were fascinated by Jaume Plensa’s heads made of alphabet shapes, which are undeniably clever (though I’m not sure why).  Katja was taken with Anthony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’ installation, interestingly situated up a tree but otherwise rather like his other stuff (is that the point?). 

Mum admired Henry Moore’s ‘draped seated woman’ - though I doubt the model was quite as impressed with her huge body and square head.  Dad's favourite was the ‘deer shelter’, a wide concrete bunker with a large skylight so you lie and gaze upwards, whilst all kids love the Greyworld musical planks, which make different noises depending on where you jump (but are these really sculptures?).

We all found Magdalena Abakanowicz’s 10 seated figures rather disturbing, I think as she forgot to give them heads.  And I tried not to like the giant hare with a female bottom, though at some level I found it rather attractive.  I do unreservedly love Dennis Oppenheim’s plant-like installations of toilets and other furniture, which make you both laugh and think, surely the point of modern sculpture?  I just think they should be called ‘lavor-trees’...

All a long way from the old commemorative tradition of public art, which in Britain’s Victorian cities generally consists of forgotten imperial duffers on horseback.  

But even these may have hidden depths.  For example, have you heard that if the horse is rampant (both front legs in the air) the rider died in combat; one front leg up means he was wounded or died of war wounds; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle?   Or of the distinction between such equestrian statuary – that is, those including a rider – and equine statues such as the huge ‘angel of the south’ White Horse planned for Ebbsfleet on the Eurostar line?   And at least the old generals now have competition in places like London’s Trafalgar Square.

Arriving back in Oxford I started to notice more and more public art.  Of course there’s plenty of great old sculpture here, such as gruesome college gargoyles and fabulous busts outside the Bodleian library.  But there’s also striking newer stuff too, from animal carvings cleverly integrated into wooden benches in Bury Knowle park, to the fun oversized Simpsons characters in the new Atomic Pizza restaurant on Cowley Road.

Most famous of all is the huge fiberglass shark crashing into a suburban house in Headington.  I’m not quite sure how the shark expresses “someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of anger and desperation”, nor how the owner Bill Heine links its meaning to CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.   But I still love it, and was delighted the council failed to have it removed.  For once I agree with the Times, which described it as “delightful, innocent, fresh and amusing” – and had a justified dig at the council, noting these are “all qualities abhorred by such committees”.

The shark sent me on my own sculpture trail, reminding me of the fantastic pair of legs sticking out of the Duke of York’s cinema roof in Brighton, round the corner from where I lived for a while.  Not surprisingly, these turn out to be by the same sculptor, John Buckley.  

Interestingly, Buckley is a trustee of Mines Advisory Group.  Having just returned myself, I couldn’t agree more with his recent exhibition summary:  "I doubt anyone can go to Cambodia and come back the same".   For him this led to merging prosthetic limbs and landmine fragments to create powerful reminders of this ongoing tragedy.  

Whilst they are undoubtedly harrowing, they do give me a pleasing conclusion:  these works at least show that sculpture can be both attractive and have a powerful point.

Cast off your watch!

How can we free ourselves from anxiety, fear, mortgages, money, guilt, debt, governments, boredom, supermarkets, bills, melancholy, pain, depression and waste?

The question was in a book that I randomly picked from the tiny shelf in my friend Tim’s reconditioned caravan.  But it was hardly chance that he happened to be reading Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Free – it was pretty much what brought him to live on the windswept Scottish island of Coll.

And what an appropriate read it was:  where else can you find chapters entitled ‘Stop moaning, be merry’ or ‘Reject career and all its empty promises’?  

Most pertinent of all was the section headed ‘Cast off your watch’.  How apt, in a place where nothing seemed to open. To be fair, the population is barely 200, so it’s lucky to have a post office, petrol pump, pub, general store and community centre.  I swear there were more post and phone boxes than people.  There’s even an organic food store, The Ethical Supply Company, more suited to Edinburgh’s leafy Collington than barren Coll of the western isles (locals call it TESCo!).

So for a few days I was liberated from the ‘expensive manacle’ of the watch.  We watched corncrakes at breakfast, took picnic lunches as we cycled between the 23 deserted beaches, and swam in the breathtakingly cold Atlantic before tea (we were at the same latitude as southern Alaska, and the gulf stream is a monstrous lie). 

At Totronald we wondered at the standing stones which had stood facing each other for thousands of years, fittingly called Na Sgeulachan (teller of tales).  The sunset over Breachacha castle was stunning:  in James Boswell’s account of his journey to the western isles he says Dr Johnson dismissed it as a ‘mere tradesman’s box’ - I beg to differ!

No watch, no mobile phone signal, and no telly or radio - it was like being back in my Cambodian village!  But even in Tim and Jane’s cosy caravan we were fed grandly and amply amused by dexterous dominos and spirited Scrabble (the curse of the traveler is he must always play by the local’s rules: is there really no such a word as ‘tonnages’?)

Nevertheless, after a few watchless days the novelty wore thin.  I enjoyed my trip to neighbouring Tiree, in particular the timeless ‘spotty’ houses where only the pointing is painted white, and the more modern trend to pick out the odd windowsill or gatepost in pillarbox red.  However it was rather marred by abundant ‘closed’ signs, the worst greeting me after a ten mile detour to the highly-rated and expertly-hidden Elephant’s End restaurant. 

I deeply admire Tim and Jane’s steadfastness.  And there’s much to be said for Tom Hodgkinson’s ideas.  But by the end of the week both me and my mate Nick were ready to leave, as much for our love of central heating as timepieces.

I have certainly had my assumptions challenged, but wasn’t quite convinced to cast off my watch for ever.  Perhaps I’ll be moved to action by the next chapter, the snappily-titled Self-important puritans must die!

Shall we say Grace?

The food arrives.  Mum loads us with spuds and steaming veggies, I slice the crusty bread, dad charges our glasses.  Now - let’s get stuck in.

Wait!  

I gently take Katja’s hand, and we clasp those of our neighbours.

Concern flashes across the hungry, tolerant faces of my parents.  Has his beautiful German girlfriend lured him into some kind of dodgy cult?

“Piep piep piep” we chant, “Wir haben uns alle lieb.  Wir wollen keinen Krieg.  Guten Appetit!”

Phew.  We all love each other, and we want no war - can’t say fairer than that.  We can all now tuck in; mum and dad are both nourished and relieved.

Saying grace before meals has gone out of fashion, in much the same way as church on Sundays or prayers at bedtime.  But whilst I’m happy with our modern, secular society, I still believe we can find value in traditional rituals. 

After all, the desire to give thanks for having enough food on our plates doesn’t have to be linked to religion - it is universal across all societies and throughout the ages. 

Whilst we are less religious, we also seem to have become less thankful.  We think a full plate is a right not a privilege.  Yet the parents who load my portions saw food rationing in their younger years - not just during the war, but well into the 1950s. 

In contrast, as a spoiled child I was sometimes allowed to choose my latest breakfast cereal fad.  When, after a day or two, I was distracted by the next packet’s coloured stickers or plastic toy, my father didn’t complain - but neither would he let ‘good’ food go to waste.  He’s probably still dutifully chomping through choco-animal-sugar-pop hoops.

But he’s the exception.  As a nation we are becoming ever more wasteful.  The Waste and Resources Action Programme revealed earlier this year that in Britain we throw away a staggering one fifth of the food we buy.  That’s 3,600,000 tonnes, costing over £10,000,000,000 (ten billion quid!) every year. 

Waste on this scale is truly shocking.  In a world where millions of people still don’t have enough food to eat, it’s unspeakably scandalous.

Perhaps we wouldn’t be so profligate if we took a moment to reflect on how lucky we are to have enough to eat?  The fact that I’ve been drawn out of my temporary blogging retirement is thanks to today being ‘blog action day’, calling on people across the world to write about food. 

So here’s my promise.  From now on, before I tuck into my meal, I will say grace.  I’ll use my own words, and don’t worry, I’ll not cause upset by speaking it aloud in a public place. 

“For what I am about to enjoy, may I be truly thankful”. 

That’s all.  Now we can get stuck in!