GOLD LAMÉ

Liverpool Plinth 2018 - 2019

 

Material: Fibreglass, steel, automotive paint.

Dimensions: L. 9’9” W. 4’6”

Date: 2014

 

Gold Lamé * will hover above the roof of Liverpool Parish Church, also known as St Nick’s overlooking Chapel Street, the waterfront and Liver Building for the next 12 months. It is the first sculpture to occupy the plinth following a collaboration between Liverpool BID Company and Liverpool Parish Church who commissioned city gallery and art organisation, dot-art, to showcase sculptors in the north.

Bill Addy, chief executive of

Liverpool BID Company, said:

 

"Gold Lamé certainly grabs the eye but carries an important message as well. We are sure it will be a welcome new addition to the area and enjoyed by businesses, residents and visitors over the coming year."

 

Lucy Byrne, managing director

of dot-art, said:

 

"We set out to give established and up-and-coming sculptors in the north a unique opportunity to showcase their works at one of Liverpool's most iconic buildings. We were inundated with some fantastic submissions, but it was Tony Heaton's Gold Lamé that really struck a chord. Dazzling, humorous, and equally meaningful, like all great art, Gold Lamé will spark conversation and put a smile on people's faces."

 

The Reverend Dr. Crispin Pailing,

rector of Liverpool, added:

 

We are over the moon that a thrilling piece of new art has found a new home in one of the most beautiful areas of the city. Visitors to the area will hopefully engage and feel inspired by this new sculpture."

 

 

 

 

GREAT BRITAIN FROM A WHEELCHAIR

 

'Great Britain from a Wheelchair' is a map of Britain made from parts of two grey NHS wheelchairs. When Tony first told me about this work as he was making it, it seemed a rather foolish and unworkable idea. I was wrong: it's wonderful - I described it elsewhere as 'like a disability version of one of my very favourite art works, the bull's head which Pablo Picasso made from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.' First seeing it, in the 'Unleashed' exhibition earlier this year, I found that initially it just looked like a lot of bits of old wheelchairs. As with those 3D prints, it took a while to adjust perceptually. Then suddenly it sprang into place - a complete, startlingly real map of Great Britain.

 

A delightful game, it forms a wonderful repudiation of the value judgement ('This is for some tragic bastard', in Tony's words) implicit in the wheelchairs.

 

Allan Sutherland (edited from DAIL magazine)

 

 

A simple, visual pun, constructed from two ex-ministry Vessa Wheelchairs.The experience of Great Britain from a Wheelchair is somewhat different.

MONUMENT TO THE UNINTENDED PERFORMER

Channel 4’s Chief Executive David Abraham today unveiled the latest installation on the ‘Big 4’ outside the corporation’s Horseferry Road headquarters – the design of which celebrates Channel 4’s involvement and commitment to the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

 

The installation, Monument to the Unintended Performer, is by disabled sculptor and artist Tony Heaton. The piece brings together three elements in addition to the Big 4: the first based on the classical Greek sculpture Discobulus, the discus thrower, evoking the spirit of the Olympics; the second element, a circle, representing the wheel of the international symbol of access; and lastly, the introduction of gold, silver and bronze considers hierarchy.

 

The latest installation on the Big 4 was unveiled as Channel 4 launched its coverage of the 2012 Paralympic Games at an event attended by Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman of LOCOG.

 

Tony Heaton said: “I wanted to use the structure of the Big 4 as one of four elements that would fuse together to form a new cohesive piece – which would provoke thought and celebrate Channel 4’s involvement and commitment to the Paralympics. The subtext of the piece is the assertion that disabled people are almost always the object of scrutiny and curiosity.”

 

David Abraham said: This new installation by Tony Heaton is a striking addition to the iconic Big 4 and is a bold representation of Channel 4’s commitment to changing attitudes to disability with our coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.”

 

Tony Heaton has worked as a sculptor since the inception of what became known as disability arts, a movement inextricably linked to the politics of disability. His performance piece ‘Shaken not Stirred’ – created from the stacking into a pyramid of 1,760 red charity collecting tins and then destroyed by the hurling into it of a prosthetic leg with a steel toe capped boot for the ‘Block Telethon’ campaign – was part of a seminal moment where disabled activists protested against the televising of Telethon and demanded rights not charity. Similarly, the assemblage, ‘Great Britain from a Wheelchair’ – a map of Britain constructed solely from the deconstructed parts of two condemned ex-ministry wheelchairs - has become an enduring image of that time.

 

The 50 foot high Big 4 was built in 2007 to celebrate Channel 4’s 25th anniversary and has previously been customised by acclaimed photographer Nick Knight, Turner Prize Titchner, renowned Ghanaian

sculptor El Anatsui, art graduate and competition winner Stephanie

GREAT BRITAIN FROM A WHEELCHAIR (RE-VISITED)

 

Sculptured plinths for Lord Coe and Sir Phillip Craven, commissioned by LOCOG for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

GREYMARES

Greymares was the result of winning a public art competition run by Community Arts North West and Manchester City Council, collaborating with a local school who wanted horses reflected in the work. The work is sited at Greymares Lane in Beswick, Greater Manchester. Research showed that the area was once a common and popular resting point for gypsies. I developed the sculpture to reflect horses and fairgrounds by depicting Gallopers, one of the traditional fairground rides. These gallopers were cut from stainless steel plate by laser water jet technology at Barrow in Furness shipyard. The two metre long horses were prefabricated at Kendal with a central ball bearing race seated in a rubberised housing which allows the sculpture to rotate like a weather vane. The sculpture sits on top of a 25 foot brick column. A blue glazed brick spirals around the column, suggesting movement. A seat running around the base of the column invites people to use the sculpture as a meeting place.

The sculpture is constructed from individual vertebrae made from porcelain, fired and then connected by pouring paper clay and re-firing.

Did you sleep with the fates?

Did they ride pillion with you that night?

Did those three goddesses

Possess you and do they now control your destiny?

Perhaps so, for it seems to me that it is more than

Irony that presides here.

There seems a predestined inevitability,

Predetermined power principles

That have dictated your consequence

Of being born to be wild.

The price you now pay back

By instalments. Piece by piece.

The latest gift you brought as promised

Carries with it a certain realisation

In its creation, that time like the tables

Continue to turn and ultimately the numbers

Do come around again.

A reminder that life is equally extraordinary,

Beautiful and brutal. Life is the real deal,

And needs to be gambled.

It sits in the alcove in the space

In which you envisaged it

A niche of measured proportions

That would frame your rachis.

Cock sure that this construction

Would fit.

Certain that you could manipulate

Its primary and secondary intent.

But then it happened. As before.

Shattered in transit - the penalty

For being experimental

For daring to move your form at speed

Without due care; without sufficient

Prophylaxis.

And so the table turned

And so the bet was laid

Thus, you both came

Together. Individually unified

As I had expected,

And perversely hoped;

Deranged. In pieces.

Fractured. Rebuilt. Redesigned and

Systematically reassembled.

Rearranged.

Stronger in repair.

More interesting and challenging.

Throwing up questions and enquiry.

Ejaculating a brief pious utterance of prayer.

“It is finished”.

As always my friend you’ve delivered

A wonderful dichotomous.

Produced by timely fate rather than accident

Two erections for the price of one.

 

Raymond C Bramford

from 'Virginal Blues' poems and prose, 2007

LANDMARKS

1987

 A series of land -based ephemeral works made with sculptor Peter Graham on Morecambe Bay in Silverdale, Lancashire.