Two days ago I completed the first of regular monthly support meetings to check in on progress with the Airspace Graduate Residency program and found it most enlightening.
There were several names of artists, organisations, groups and more that will only benefit the new work to be produced during this art opportunity, and for that Airspace deserves high praise.
Currently, there are 3 new sculptures in development: one with a complete frame in need of an exterior body and paint; and two still existing as ideas waiting to be built and crafted from the new material that has started to become a trademark – steel.
The idea behind these new sculptures will be to explore their visually associated contexts and to deconstruct their abilities to be monuments, dedications, memorials etc to Stoke-on-Trent’s community population and demographics.
There should not be an air of mystery to them, so these sculptures’ appearances will resemble but not copy, the following objects: a chandelier, a memorial plinth, and a modernist sculpture.
The reasons behind choosing such symbols of various concerns dates back to the point of this and any other artist residency: what you take with you.
The semiotics of words like trust and community, when applied to Stoke-on-Trent, have various exemplars and institutions. The city centre (Hanley) Library and Archives Centre has a modernist design; every town across the country and world has some form of a [war] memorial to draw people together. An empty plinth is begging for suggestions, whilst a chandelier is seldom seen in many parts of Stoke-on-Trent or the UK or even the world.
It looked and sounded like a terrific marriage of communal interaction when artist Jeremy Deller (b. 1966) proposed placing a bombed car from Iraq on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth project [The Spoils of War (Memorial for an Unknown Civilian)], which could have been rejected due to the controversial political aura it carried. Nevertheless, the fact that that car ended up in the Imperial War Museum speaks about the piece as a symbol of the latest Imperial [Empire] conflict: the War in Iraq.
But this post is not about comparing notes. This post is about, as blogging does, sharing. The fact that Stoke-on-Trent has been kind enough to share it’s multicultural, diverse among 5 towns all united as one city, makes it that much more special to someone not from the area. A resident artist for example.
