Art that cleaned up at awards put on display . . . beside sink
No public space can be found for sculptor’s Tower of Babel piece
A SCULPTOR is displaying his award-winning work on the draining board of his kitchen sink because no public space can be found for him to gift the art piece to his home city.
Noel McKenna, whose work sells internationally and whose clients include Billy Connolly, won The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts award for Tower of Babel, a sculpture inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s eponymous paintings.
Despite interest from private collectors, the Glasgow School of Art graduate would prefer to gift his clay-fired work to the city’s people, but said the authorities have told him there is no “appropriate context” in which to display the 22-inch-high piece.
“I’m crazy about Glasgow, and have spent a lifetime inspired by its architecture. I want to give something back.
“I’d really like as many people as possible to see The Tower, and for them to be moved by it in some way,” said the sculptor, whose prized piece sits beside the kitchen sink of his childhood home – a fourin-a-block council house in the city’s Nitshill area.
“The Tower has been a real labour of love. I don’t want to sell it, for it just to vanish, and never be seen again – I want to give it to Glasgow. I feel this is where it belongs.”
The Tower of Babel is a biblical story told in the book of Genesis, and is intended to explain how different languages originated. The tower itself was said to have been built by a monolingual humanity,
‘‘ It has been on the draining board for a few years because at least visitors to my home can get to see it
as a mark of achievement and unification.
Glasgow’s St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art was recently approached about the sculpture. This offer was then passed to decision-makers at Glasgow Museums, who told the artist that the city did not have the context in which to display the piece, due to its museums’ programme having been planned several years in advance.
Mr McKenna has created further award-winning work during the time The Tower has been beside his sink. Appealing for a space for the wider public to view the artefact, he said: “It has been on the draining board for a few years now because at least visitors to my home can get to see it. When they walk in, they are in awe. It always provokes a reaction.
“I doubt I’ll make another work like it. It would be a privilege for me to find it a public space for it in Glasgow.”
Mr McKenna’s research for the piece took him to Tunisia, where some of the finest examples of Roman coliseums can be found. “It has been the most intricate and technically difficult pieces I have produced, so far. I really went beyond the pale with it. There was always an extremely high risk of shrinkage and cracks,” he said, adding “pure synchronicity” led to creating The Tower.
“I was walking around some Glasgow charity shops and picked up four different books. Each had an image of the Tower of Babel in them. My gut feeling was that this is what I should be working on,” said Mr McKenna.
A spokesman for Glasgow Life, said: “There are a number of requests by artists to have their work displayed in Glasgow’s museums. Each request is considered on a curatorial and practical basis and it is not possible to facilitate every application.”