Product Description
The North East of England boasts one of the greatest concentrations of recent public sculpture in Britain, the most well known being 'The Angel of the North'. "Public Sculpture of North-East England" documents over 450 of these works with full details of their materials, physical condition, ownership and commissioning and also their use and interpretation at various times in history. From this emerges a fascinating picture of the development of public sculpture and monuments in the region and of the contribution these objects make to ideas of local identity.
From the Author
Standard Reference on N.E. England's plethora of public art.This book results from 3 years of intensive inspection and research, carried out by a team from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. The project was largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the University of Northumbria, with smaller sponsorship from Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council, Durham County Council, Northern Arts, Great North Forest, the Henry Moore Foundation and the Paul Mellon Foundation.
The research team did their best to visit EVERY piece of sculpture in the enormous region covering Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Co. Durham and Cleveland. They then followed this up with detailed background research on the commissioning of each one and their subsequent history. Also major new research on hundreds of artists, whose biographies are contained in the book. We include works dating from the 1600s to 1999, ranging from war memorials to abstract wall reliefs and everything in between in terms of scale, medium, subject and location.
The book is introduced by a number of wide-ranging essays written by Paul Usherwood and Jeremy Beach which aim to contextualise the region's public sculpture.
Obviously such a book exists as a static resource, but it is hoped that the information it contains will eventually be available as an on-line resource as part of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association's national recording project.
Overall an incredibly fulfilling research project which I was privileged to be involved in. I hope the book does our work justice.