Precedents
There are many examples of public art commissions to commemorate famous or well-loved people. Many of these take the form of portraits or statues of the person being commemorated. However, a number of very interesting commemorative artworks exist, which are abstract or represent the person through motifs or symbols associated with them. Since we are not looking to commission a portrait or statue we have gathered here a selection of alternative artworks:
Scallop by Maggi Hambling
This work celebrates the British composer Benjamin Britten and was unveiled on Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk, on 8th November 2003.
Maggi Hambling's Scallop is at once a monument to a great musician-composer and a celebration of the origins of his art. It is perfectly appropriate that its forms should resemble those of a sea shell for it is a work that reminds us that music is an aural art and we think of the ear as being like a shell.
The sounds of the North Sea – wind, wave and bird cry – are unrelenting, unstoppable: on the Suffolk coast they are augmented by the rhythmic crash, wash and drag of its breaking waves on the great shingle shoreline. It is an absolute presence, there for as long as there are ears to hear it. It was a constant reality in Benjamin Britten's life at the place where he lived and worked, created a marvellous festival of music, and in which he set one of his greatest works, Peter Grimes. The 'Sea Interludes' of that opera are among the most beautiful evocations of the sounds of the sea in all music.
Hambling's sculpture, seen from this landward side, rises and splays against the sky like the wings of a bird, a dove or a phoenix, at take-off: an image of vitality, of peace, hope and regeneration. At sunrise and sunset, seen respectively from west and east, it is the great standing shell that dominates our view and becomes a kind of primal marker of the passing days.
When we walk round Scallop to seaward another dynamic is revealed. Here we see in the shining stainless steel of its wave-like forms a silver mirror-image of the breaking waves that sound below them at the sea's shifting tidal edge. There is a turbulence here that answers to the sea's clamour and to its unceasing movement. These forms answer to the sea's soundings in visual complexities that are in exciting contrast to the simple single scallop shape that stands against the seaward sky as we approach from the land. These forms create an echo chamber: the sounds of wind, wave and sea bird are focused at the sculpture's centre.
This text is an extract from www.maggihambling.com/Works/Scallop4.html written by Mel Gooding.
Song by Paul de Monchaux, memorial to Winston Churchill 2005
This memorial was the culmination of the BBC TWO series Great Britons, in which the wartime leader was voted overall winner by BBC viewers in a poll to find the greatest Briton of all time.
Song is a freestanding timber tower made from 20 interlocking units of sawn green English oak heartwood.
De Monchaux's inspiration for the shape of the memorial comes from Churchill's use of the structures of poetry and song in the preparation of his wartime messages. Churchill's speech drafts were typed from shorthand notes in what was known by his office as 'Psalm Style' – blocks of indented text, stepping diagonally down the page – and the finished drafts were known as 'Hymn Sheets'. "I first saw the speech drafts in the archive of the Imperial War Museum," explains Paul de Monchaux, "and was struck by Churchill's awareness of the way in which the shape of the spaces around words can amplify their meaning.
The title of the piece comes from Churchill's own description of his contribution to a meeting of French leaders at the time of Dunkirk: "I sang my usual song: we would fight on whatever happened." Paul de Monchaux says: "One of the many historic functions of song is to allay fear, and Churchill's contribution in the war years was to lift the spirits and conquer our sense of dread."
