It’s funny where a Facebook conversation can take you. Today it’s about Swindon’s gorilla sculpture. Now residing in Queen’s Park, it began its Swindon life under the gazebo/pavilion (whatever we’re calling it) by the Wyvern Theatre.
Responding to a post by someone asking ‘what’s your fave piece of Swindon art?’, Swindon stalwart Marilyn Beale posted a photograph of a carved wooden arch that used to be in Lydiard Park. Now, I’m not gonna lie, how we got from that to the gorilla I do not know. But here we are talking about Swindon’s very own King Kong!
As the plaque tells us, Tom Gleeson made the gorilla from welded steel. Thamesdown Borough council bought the piece under the excellent Per Cent for Art scheme in 1985. Further that the worshipful mayor of Thamesdown Doreen Dart, unveiled the sculpture. Gorilla found himself re-sited to Queen’s Park in 1994.
A clothes prop to the rescue
We now return to Marilyn Beale for a lovely little gorilla rescue and repair story.
Having been moved from his original location to the park and after the passage of some time, gorilla was looking a little the worse for wear. His shabbiness brought about questions on his future. But gorilla’s luck was in – there was a fair amount of fondness for him in the parks department and the will to save him. So – they needed cash for his repair but there wasn’t much forthcoming – plus ça change huh? BUT! Gorilla’s luck was in yet again. The park’s department knew a couple of willing volunteers: Mr Beale a retired sheet metal worker and Merv Mapstone a retired blacksmith.
Someone had ripped gorilla’s hand off and tossed it into Queen’s Park lake. So to save yet more money, Marilyn B offered up her redundant clothes post and Mr B set to, to make a new hand for gorilla from it.
Swindon’s Gorilla Sculpture gets some TLC – 3rd November 2011Swindon’s Gorilla Sculpture gets some TLC – 3rd November 2011 – Mr B
It seems that Merv was given the job of welding on the thumb but he made a mistake. The thumb stuck out of one of the other fingers, so it had to be sawn off and re-welded. Marilyn thinks Merv was Holder Upper that day!
I think this is a super story. I’m so glad the gorilla’s glory got restored to him.
Queen’s Park is home to another fab sculpture called Turtle Storm. Find out about that here:
Only yesterday I put together a post about a long-standing piece of Swindon’s public art. Namely the Tricentre Chi Sculpturein the town centre dating to 1991. But for this post we come up-to-date with the plough horse sculpture on the Gablecross* roundabout.
*Now nicknamed the stablecross roundabout! Ha!
The Plough Horse Sculpture on Gablecross roundabout – with thanks to Strolling in Swindon for the image.
Commissioned as part of Swindon’s New Eastern Village development, finance for it came from section 106 developer funding. What that means is that money was allocated for the explicit purpose. Ergo SBC haven’t spent any of your money on it!
I do hope there’s a strategy in place for taking care of this new piece of public art. I can’t tell you how much it frustrates me that Swindon is blessed with so much public art – yet none of it cared for. The West Swindon sculpture trail being a case in point. But I digress.
I’ve not seen this work in the (horse) flesh as it were – the photos here are courtesy of the Strolling in Swindon Facebook page – link to it under the featured image. It looks perfectly fine from here but it would be nice to get a proper look at sometime. Anyway, the reason for the horse is to reference Swindon’s rural and farming heritage. Well … that’s okay as it goes – but surely we can say that about anywhere in the country? Swindon wasn’t/isn’t on its own in having that?
And still no pig!
So – we’re collecting quite the menagerie now. We’ve got this horse. We’ve also got the cow at the GWH and the ram sculpture on the site of the old cattle market in Old Town. But STILL no HAM. Given that Swindon is alleged (though it’s by no means certain) to have got its name from pigs – Swinedune – (maybe) surely we should have something that references that? Even if it is a myth.
I’m somewhat late, well over two years, in celebrating this VJ Day memorial in Queen’s Park in Swindon.But I happened to pass by the park the other day so took the opportunity to nip in and take a picture of it. And the whip up a wee blog about it.
Designed by Dr Mike Pringle, the stainless steel sculpture features a woman, wrapped in a flag and holding a child. South Swindon Parish Council commissioned the piece. It’s aim, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE ( Victory in Europe)Day in May 2020. And also VJ Day in August of that year.
NB: You can find a Victory in Europe monument in Town Gardens in Swindon’s Old Town. And photographs of it in the aforementioned blog post.
A prolonged fight
May 8th, 1945 saw victory declared over Nazi Germany. Yet fighting continued against Japanese forces in the Pacific until August of that year. It took the dropping by US pilots of atomic bombs onto two Japanese cities and the death of 226,000 souls for Japan to surrender.
Purton Road Bridge Swindon – something I’ve seen often but have never thought too much about until Roger Ogle posted the photograph below on Facebook. That prompted me to ask him for more information about it.
Purton Road Bridge Swindon – photo by Roger Ogle
West and north joined
Back in 1993 the Link Magazine, created by Roger Ogle, covered the building of the new bridge.
The extract reads – paraphrased
‘A new bridge, marrying art and engineering and making access easier between west and north Swindon opened five months ahead of schedule.
The £1.25 million structure spans the Swindon to Glocs railway line and is the town’s biggest piece of public art.
The bridge parapets form a 140ft long relief sculpture frieze created by artist Richard Perry. The frieze incorporates motifs of transport, industry and environment.
The then Thamesdown District council and Wiltshire County Council joined together to commission the project. It formed part of plans made 15 years ago. At that point the two councils agreed on the building of Roughmoor and Shaw. The project included:
a. A smaller bridge over the nearby River Ray and … b. … 700 metres of new road joining Moredon with Sparcells.
The then mayor of Thamesdown, Doreen Dart, observed that the bridge was a milestone in the town’s development. She went on to say that it represented a link between the western expansion and future development in the north of the town …
… Although the old northern road will at length become a footpath/cycle route from which you can see the artwork, there’s no obvious pedestrian route to allow viewing.’
Link Magazine January 1994
Other posts about public art
This blog holds a great number of posts about public art in Swindon. I must have written about most of it at some time or another. Depending on how well I’ve organised and categorised my posts you should find most of them in this blog category here: https://swindonian.me/category/public-art-sculpture/
I’ve no idea how much public art other towns have but it seems to me that Swindon has an astonishing amount.
‘When I began blogging about Swindon, the public art was one of the first things I turned my keyboard to. Not that I even knew the term then. Back in the corner of Derbyshire I left behind, the closest I got to it was an ancient village pump, a cenotaph and a redundant and rusting pit-winding wheel. Hence, discovering all the public art in Swindon was quite the revelation. It’s not possible to write about all of it here but, if you’re so inclined, Born Again Swindonian contains oodles of posts about Swindon’s public art – in particular the West Swindon sculpture trail.‘
Thamesdown Borough Council commissioned the pieces that comprise the West Swindon sculpture trail in the period from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Funding came, in part, from the housing developer’s contributions to the Percent-for-Art public realm scheme.
My Sculpture Favourites
Within this blog I’ve written about much if Swindon’s sculpture and outdoor art installations. Thus there’s no point in my going over it all in this overview post. You should find it all in this section of the blog. But I will give special mention to a couple of my faves.
And one of my very favourite pieces is The Blondinis. Such a shame that they’re now languishing in a park in Gorse Hill. I still miss them.
Part of the West Swindon Sculpture Walk this one is located on one of the many superb big green spaces that West Swindon features, it’s quite easy to forget that one is in the middle of a big conurbation. It needs little imagination to see the artist’s intention for the sculpture as a relic of a long gone civilization.
