Wolverhampton’s wonderful Barbara Hepworth sculpture, Rock Form, has stood bravely in the Mander Centre for 46 years – until asset managers Delancey yanked it out a few weeks ago under cover of the Mander’s future redevelopment. My last two posts tell the shameful story – here and here.
For the last month and more, the owners and their associates have sat with lips zipped, cleverly managing not to deny that the Hepworth may be sold off. And it’s not just my enquiries that have been stonewalled – every objector has met with the same. The future for this important piece of Wolverhampton’s heritage remains completely in the dark.
Coincidentally, just as the Mander Hepworth has disappeared, the huge new Wolverhampton Sainsbury’s has opened for business, with “at its heart” (as the Express & Star put it – actually on a small patch of grass by the entrance) a brand new artwork commissioned by the supermarket.
Out with yesterday’s meaningless abstractions …
… and in with today’s bright new corporate sculpture!
Out of darkness cometh light (the city motto) is an eight metre column of stainless steel, designed by Planet Art of Pelsall, who seem to specialise in monumental stuff for supermarkets. The cornetto-ish shape is oddly reminiscent of 2012’s Olympic torches; round the base are cut simplified shapes of vanished smoky industrial buildings, from which extend trees that blossom into an Escher-style frieze of escaping birds.
There is a certain portentousness about this symbolism. I was a bit stuck on what the birds might represent, apart from, well, er, birds. But according to artist Julie Edwards they symbolise hope for the future. This must be what Sainsbury’s bosses think public art should look like. I’ve seen considerably worse, I have to say. But I’m not quite convinced that Out of Darkness will still be standing proudly in 46 years’ time. With all due respect to Planet Art, is this what the City gets in exchange for its disappearing Hepworth? And is it a fair exchange?
But perhaps Mander / Delancey / RBS could take a leaf from Sainsbury’s book? If the Hepworth goes for a million pound Burton, why not silence the objectors by filling the empty space in the revamped shopping centre with a mega-impressive sheet-metallic thingumajig, symbolic of the aspirations of a reinvigorated post-recession corporate Britain? I’d suggest a base of stylised closed doors from which extend the arms of hatchet-wielding asset strippers, releasing flocks of pound signs taking flight.
It would be a vast improvement on that fuddy-duddy old Hepworth anyway. Those timeless curves and negative spaces, that grace and balance – after all, what did they mean?
