Lord of the Rings?

On my way home tonight I detoured so I could go past the first ring of Anish Kapoor's Temenos in Middlesbrough. This is a huge sculpture, or the first part of five over a decade (or so) - lauded as the world's biggest public art initiative when it launched in July 2008. You can see what I wrote about it then here, read about the raising of the ring here and see a photo above. Be assured, the Transporter Bridge is not that far away - this really is big. (There's also a great photo on the Evening Gazette website here, but I'm not borrowing that out of respect for the fantastic project manager Sean.)

There is only the first ring in place, but it is impressive and enjoyable in its own right, like looking at the first few marks an artist might make on a drawing or a painting. (Except, of course, you don't need years' of detailed engineering studies and so on to start a painting. )

The ironies of the piece, its location, conception and materials have only deepened since the launch, with the potential closure of Corus's steel plant just down river at Redcar. Regeneration has not got any easier, or any less important. But the imaginative impact perhaps only gains power from that. I can't wait to see it take shape over the next months - apparently the 'net' takes some time to be made taut.

(The eagle-eyed who read my July 2008 blog will deduce the project is slightly late getting finished. An accident early in the construction process led to some delays. It's nothing to the gestation period required for great big horses though...)

It may be art but is it cricket?

Sports versus the arts is a seemingly perennial – though entirely pointless – debate. Michael Vaughan, the former captain of England and Yorkshire is the latest example of the two meeting, with his new career in the visual arts threatening to give a whole new meaning to the phrase Turning Point. Apparently enjoying the galleries of Shoreditch on rainy days has led him to a new practice he calls ‘artballing’. (As dictinct to the art balls that some artists talk?) See here for a news story and here for the gallery's description.

There’s not a huge amount to say about the actual works themselves, though I think I’ve seen worse. He hits cricket balls at the canvas, with a concept behind each one. You could say it's a kind of a Yorkshire cricketing version of Niki de Saint Phalle. But you'd be pushing it. I can imagine they'll be very popular with cricket-loving executives.

It’s certainly an interesting commercial model. Perhaps there’s a market for barn doors whacked with footballs covered in paint by failed premier league strikers?

Why it needs to be 'for everyone'?

Just because I like it and want to share it, here’s another quote from Gilles Deleuze’s essay ‘Desert Islands’. I suppose you might say art where he says literature.

‘The essence of the deserted island is imaginary and not actual, mythological and not geographical. At the same time, its destiny is subject to those human conditions that make mythology possible. Mythology is not simply willed into existence, and the peoples of the earth quickly ensured they would no longer understand their own myths. It is at this very moment literature begins. Literature is the attempt to interpret, in an ingenious way, the myths we no longer understand, at the moment we no longer understand them, since we no longer know how to dream them or reproduce them.’

In what form would you like to return?

In the latest issue of Freize magazine, on which I've just been spilling my sandwich, the fantastic French author Sophie Calle is asked 'what images keep you company in the space where you work?' She answers: 'In my studio there is a stuffed giraffe that I bought when my mother died, to replace her. Her name is Monique too, and she looks at me from on high with sadness and irony, just like my mother did.' She concludes the questionnaire with 'I don't think my mother would have chosen to return as a stuffed giraffe in the studio of her daughter, but she is dead.' It sounds a little cold without the photo, but when you see the giraffe, which you can here, it is more complex, has humour and remembrance alongside grief.

My mum passed away nearly two years ago, which meant I only saw a little of Calle's film of her own mother almost imperceptibly leaving life when I visited the Venice Biennale in 2007. It was far too close to home to bear. I wasn't ready to hold my own breath in that way again. The picture of her giraffe is going up on the wall at home, a small lesson in holding the facts and feelings of one's life in creative focus.