art SITES Britain & Ireland

[Gateshead, public art]
Antony Gormley
Angel of the North, 1998
metro to Gateshead, then bus 725, 726 to Birtley 0191-232-5325 (bus info)
Located 3 mi south of downtown Gateshead alongside the A167 highway near its intersection with A1 at the Birtley rotary.

Fact-ridden documentation reveals that Angel of the North was designed by Antony Gormley (Turner Prize winner, 1994); engineered with the help of modern digital technology and time-honored industrial and shipbuilding techniques; fabricated by regional steelworkers and craftspeople; and transported to the site, assembled and installed by skilled crews operating monstrous pieces of equipment. The official statistics also relate that the figure weighs 100 tons and is 65 ft (20 m) tall with a wingspan of 175 ft (54 m). Its size is thus approximately the same as a jumbo jet. Beneath the ground, the concrete-pile foundation on which the sculpture rests is 65 ft (20 m) deep and reinforced by 52 bolts each 10 ft (3 m) long. Without question, the Angel is a colossal, mind-boggling work of art.

The sculpture serves as a kind of signpost at the southern entry into the Tyneside region. Strategically placed, high atop a grassy hilltop in an open stretch of barren landscape, it is prominently visible to people in cars heading north on the main A1 highway. (90,000 vehicles presumably pass by every day.) You can even see it as a passenger traveling on the London-Edinburgh train. In addition to being a landmark, the sculpture was envisioned as an promotional icon bolding asserting a new identity for the area. (Auspiciously, it stands on land previously used as a coal mine.) As might be expected, local residents were initially skeptical, if not sharply critical, of such an enormous and costly art project. Many, however, now view the Angel with pride as a symbol of the Gateshead-Newcastle regeneration. Undeniably, the city, region and nation recognized the sculpture's potential value as an international tourist attraction and extraordinary public monument. At one fell swoop it put Gateshead on the map.

All that said, nothing really prepares you for the experience of seeing the androgynous, humanoid, faceless, rib-structured, utterly symmetrical, poised, stock-still Angel. Looming large over people, who only come up to its ankles, and standing upright in full command of the landscape like a majestic presence, it's a very impressive sight. Actually, the figure is more provocative than overwhelming. It's called an angel, and yet its rusted-steel, welded form, heavy materiality and straight-line, firmly grounded body hardly seem angelic at least not according to conventional visions of weightless, fluttery blond cherubs in diaphanous white robes! True, the cruciform posture adds a spiritual aura, but more than this Gormley's sculpture conveys an enigmatic, mystical sense of time and place. Somewhat like the menhirs at Stonehenge or the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko, the Angel of the North eludes definition even as it sustains wonderment.

[London, art gallery]
Jay Joplin/White Cube
44 Duke St, 2nd floor
St. James's, London SW1 Y 6DD
020-7930-5373 f: 7930-9973
www.whitecube.com
Fri--Sat, 12--6; closed Mon--Thurs
tube: Green Park

You don't expect to find a radical, contemporary art gallery in the midst of a neighborhood populated by old master galleries displaying rare coins in velvet-lined cases in the window and gilded-framed marine and horse paintings on wainscoted, dark oak walls. Nor would you think that the hottest vanguard gallery in London would be identified by an insipid signboard. Odder still, you enter a commonplace door, climb a scruffy, narrow staircase and come to a tiny room, barely big enough to hold one or two paintings. Soon you realize this is it. Nothing big and splashy, not even a chic space for the receptionist who sits across the hall in a compressed, dentist-office-like cubicle crowded with file cabinets.

Joplin has in fact turned the tables on the conventional gallery concept by having a small "project room" instead of a grand "showroom." Rather than present numerous objects in a museum or merchandising format, the aim of White Cube is to promote the close viewing of and personal experience with a particular artist's work in a space that is literally a white cube. "The central concern when establishing the program was to create an intimate space in which an invited artist might present a single important work of art or a coherent body of work within a very focused environment." This approach is similar to that of Gallery Piéce Unique in Paris but otherwise it stands apart.

In its short existence (it opened in May 1993), White Cube has both catapulted some of the most creative (and provocation-oriented) young talent to fame and presented some of the best new work by underrecognized, midcareer international artists.

Gallery artists: Darren Almond, Itai Doron, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Marcus Harvey, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Sarah Morris, Marc Quinn, Marcus Taylor, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gavin Turk, Cerith Wyn Evans. Exhibitions: Franz Ackermann, Nobuyoshi Araki, Ashley Bickerton, Sophie Calle, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gregory Crewdson, Carroll Dunham, Brian Eno, Angus Fairhurst, Peter Fischli/ David Weiss, Anna Gaskell, Nan Goldin, Gary Hill, Michael Joo, Clay Ketter, Suchan Kinoshita, Sean Lander, Damian Loeb, Esko M³nnikkä, Walter Niedermayr, Jack Pierson, Lari Pittman, Richard Prince, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Doris Salcedo, Christian Schumann, Glen Seator, Jessica Stockholder, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Luc Tuymans, Patrick van Caekenbergh, Jeff Wall, Terry Winters.

In April 2000, White Cube will expand to a second location in Hoxton Square. Finally, the gallery will have room to present large work and more inclusive exhibitions. The Duke Street gallery will remain as a project space.

[East Anglia, architecture]
American Air Museum
architect: Norman FOSTER, 1995--97
Duxford, CB2 4QR
0122-383-5000
daily: summer (Mar 15--Oct 24), 10--6; winter, 10--4
admission:£7/4.70
Duxford is 8 mi south of Cambridge, accessible by Stagecoach Cambus from Drummer St.

If you balk at the idea of visiting a military museum, think of it exclusively in terms of seeing one of the most praised, award-winning exemplars of contemporary architecture and one of the best works by the widely esteemed Norman Foster. (It won the Stirling Prize for the outstanding completed building in the UK or Europe in 1998.) True to form, Foster created a simple, elegant structure whose gargantuan size is magically mitigated by the awesome sense of light and space captured within.

Duxford, a city that played a vital role in World War II, is now the center for historic aviation. The American Air Museum (constituted as part of London's Imperial War Museum) is a tribute to American air power as well as a memorial to the thousands of US airmen who died in World War II, especially those who flew from British bases. The display comprises 21 combat aircraft dating from World War I to the Gulf War and related imagery. By far, the dominant object and centerpiece is a B52 Stratofortress bomber. In fact, Foster's whole design was geared to the mega-dimensions of the B52.

With its broad curving roof, the building appropriately evokes the image of a hangar even as it integrates seamlessly into the flat, surrounding landscape. You enter through a tunnel-like passage, emerging in the middle of the vast interior facing the nose of a B52. It, like all the other aircraft, is suspended from the roof as if in flight. To say the effect is spellbinding is to underestimate the power of the installation and the space. What's more, there's the realization that the virtuoso single-span, precast concrete roof is also engineered to hold up an unfathomable tonnage!

At the end of the museum, where the roof accommodates the 52.5-foot-high (16 m) tail fin of the B52, a glazed wall abruptly slices off the building's curvature. It is the only dramatic feature in a building that effectively serves as a neutral backdrop for its contents. To be sure, the glass facade also floods the interior with natural light and gives contextualizing views of the airfield and runways beyond.