BRISTOL.- The first permanently sited artwork by British artist Roger Hiorns has been unveiled in Bristol, South West England. ‘
Free Tank: The retrospective view of the pathway’ located at Glass Wharf on Bristol’s Historic Floating Harbour has been in development since 2012 and was commissioned as the final element of the Bristol Temple Quarter waterfront master plan.
Produced by Art and The Public Realm at Bristol City Council and curated by Aldo Rinaldi, the project is the result of 4 years research and development, and comprises an architectural space designed with Stirling Prize winning architects Witherford Watson Mann, that forms the setting for a pair of monolithic granite sculptures.
Previously home to the City’s glass industry, Glass Wharf is located on the side of Bristol’s Floating Harbour, a historic lock system designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Over time the banks were in-filled, and a harbour wall built, leaving a single pennant stonewall which the artist has integrated into the work. Hiorns marks the ancient route called the ‘Free Tank’; a former inlet to the water’s edge which permitted the public to draw aqua pura from the tidal harbour. Hiorns re-establishes this lost route by allowing visitor access to the same water’s edge, whilst simultaneously evoking references to its prior use as a glass works.
Curator Aldo Rinaldi states “The project has been many years in development, partly due to the challenges that the commission posed as a site for artistic interpretation and intervention. Roger’s approach was simple and elegant; to re-establish a previously permitted right of way and to use this space as a setting for a sculptural intrusion”. In developing the project, Hiorns worked closely with Stephen Witherford of Witherford Watson Mann Architects to design the architectural space which is the setting for Hiorns’s monumental furnace sculptures. The design is characterised by the use of a number of different concrete casting techniques which have been used to create walls, floors and a new staircase. These include pre-cast, shuttered and poured concrete, all of which contain aggregates selected by the artist, including Cornish and black basalt. The furnace sculptures which are each seven metres tall are made from Zimbabwean black granite and have a combined weight of 32 tonnes.
Hiorns explains his approach “from the start, it was important to oppose the rigidly established code of materials that surrounded the remnant of public space called the Free Tank. To defy and humanise the local 'palette' of reflective glass, stainless steel railing, Portland paving, leather seated meeting room and abbreviated graphic, a global material code that hides the corporate lawyer within, all tidily rational office blocks, further hiding the personal litigator, the insurance salesman, paperwork is produced, contract machines, surrounding the out of time and out of place 'ledge' of the Free Tank”.
In making the work, the traditional craft of stonemasonry was combined with innovative hi-tech facilities to produce the intricate sculptures, which were fabricated by S McConnell and Sons in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland. Alan McConnell commented “We knew this would be a challenge with some of the granite blocks weighing in at around 10 tonnes with each one requiring turning on the CNC machines to carve their form and drill the central flue holes which run through the sculpture. The dry build also posed practical challenges given the work’s height and weight, which meant the only time the furnaces were fully built was at their final resting place”.
The artist adds, “I intruded a pair of monumental granite furnaces to the business composition, impossibly graceful and complicatedly dense, each 7 metres tall. The granite agrees a permanence that the 30-year lifespans of the surrounding buildings perhaps do not. Each furnace has an opening, a mouth as organic, as sexually suggestive as I found fit, sculpted in clay, scanned and superimposed by a new programme. The work suggests a density materially that absorbs the surrounding light-handed surface play. A pair of honed granite objects, set within a dark concrete and renovated brickwork outer limit of public availability. Standing ‘outside’ the prevailing logic of the site itself, a different responsibility to this place can exist. Something corporeal, lasting, and immovable - founded close to the water - a bodily place partly removed.”
Architect Stephen Witherford states “This is a work that draws together river, room, sculpture and sky into a modest reflection on what is generically termed ‘public space’. Conceived together, found and made, these elements respond to and engage in time and the deep-rooted physical and social marks left on the ground. The work has drawn on the presence of material experienced near the water and open to the sky, hand-worked through a combination of skill and detachment. Standing defiantly and quietly the open concrete room cut in close to the water and its black granite furnaces establish an atmosphere that is conducive to reflection, distancing the visual noise and anxiety of city regeneration pressing in all around.”
Hiorns responds to the antiquity of the area and is both inspired by and embedded within the history of the site; that traditionally allowed common people to draw water via an ancient permitted right. Hiorns carries on his battle against the establishment through intertwining themes of tension and utopia and the work intends to stir interpretation among viewers from their visual and physical experiences. Hiorns challenges confinement and prefers exploring the open question, why can’t life itself be ‘the material for a work of art?’ by promising simultaneously to provoke, engage and challenge visitors.
