The Herald - The Herald Magazine
STICK OR TWIST
EIGHT ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS ARE AIMING TO BRING THE BIGGEST NAME IN BRITISH ART TO GREENOCK. HERE WE FIND OUT WHY
Can Greenock’s sugar sheds be reborn as a shrine to art?
What about a Wee Tate? It is a simple question: London has two Tate galleries and Liverpool has one. Even St Ives has a Tate. Despite its rich history steeped in bubbling vats of sugar, Greenock has nothing to mark its link between the world of art and the industry that made fortunes for industrialist Henry Tate.
One legacy of the tons of sugar shipped to our shores from the Caribbean from as far back as the mid-1800s still stands on the quayside at James Watt Dock – the sugar sheds.
When Tate & Lyle stopped production in Greenock in 1997 it was the end of an era that saw jobs for generations of families and the coffers boosted for merchants who built big houses on the hill overlooking the bay. At one time 400 ships plied their trade between the West Indies, across the Atlantic to Greenock and back again. Plantations built on the slave trade produced the sugar shipped to Scotland for refining but conditions in the factories here were little better than those experienced thousands of miles away. Mountains of refined sugar piled up in warehouses, or sugar sheds. Outside gales howled but inside it was hot and humid and workers toiled in the sweet, syrupy smell that permeated the town.
From the youngest of children who stirred the vats of molten sugar to the slaves who toiled in Caribbean fields and the men who lined their pockets with the profits, they are all being remembered in a project by eight artists and musicians, led by artist Alec Galloway, called Absent Voices.
There will be collaborations involving all sorts of people, including some who worked in the sugar sheds, between now and November next year, culminating in an exhibition at the McLean Museum and Art Gallery in Greenock and an event in the echoing sugar sheds. Alongside Galloway, participants include singer-songwriter Kevin McDermott, award-winning filmmaker and photographer Alastair Cook, artist Rod Miller, singer-songwriter Yvonne Lyon, artist Anne McKay and musicians and artists Ryan King and Alan Carlisle.
“My family were all sugar people; some worked here in the sugar sheds and others in local refineries,” explains Galloway, who was shortlisted for the prestigious Aspect Prize for painting and is a leading light in architectural glass making. Last year during the Whysman Festival, a year-long celebration of the life and work of the late George Wyllie, he created giant question mark sculptures along the shoreline from Langbank to Greenock, visible from the
M8. “One of my driving forces was because a lot of projects in Inverclyde tend to focus on the shipbuilding. There’s practically nothing to do with sugar apart from a few street names. If you go around the town you’ll find Tobago Street and Jamaica Street and Virginia Street. I’ve always felt the sugar history has been under-represented, especially creatively.”
Prince Charles is known to be a supporter of retaining the sugar sheds and visited the building in 2002 to back the campaign to save the building from demolition. Now this £100,000 arts project, supported by EuroMillions winners Christine and Colin Weir from nearby Largs, Heritage Lottery Fund, Inverclyde Council and Riverside Inverclyde, firmly focuses on the buildings.
“We’re hoping that out of the project we will have enough funding to create a public art piece in the town. You’ve got the Tate in London and the Tate in Liverpool but there’s no Tate in Scotland. Given that Tate & Lyle was a big part of local history, it seems apt. A Tate would be a great idea. This building would be perfect for it.
“As much as we’re going to be doing the creative response individually, the end game is to shine a spotlight to developers and say, why can’t Scotland have a Tate in the town where the sugar came from? If you look at the Turbine Hall in London and think about the scale of that, this building would work. You could have a heritage space and a gallery. It could be divided up to house large pieces of work, industrial art, as well as paintings.
“We need people with deep pockets. Hopefully our Absent Voices project will have a ripple effect.”
ALEC GALLOWAY
This maker isn’t has the championed first time the the stained sugar sheds. glass He was initiative a driving in 2007 force to in mark Watersongs, the changing an arts geography of Inverclyde’s industrial waterfront.
“When I was a kid there were massive piles of sugar here. I remember fishing at the quayside but my pals and I would sneak in and climb up the mountains of sugar and slide back down. I remember the smell, it had a very pungent molasses-like aroma.”
For part of his contribution to Absent Voices, Galloway will open square windows high in the walls to let light flood in. “Because they are south facing, it is like beams of light coming in. There’s something almost spiritual about it.”
Galloway works from a studio in Greenock and will be using glass-casting techniques to make sculptures from the foundry stamps on the forest of wide iron pillars that hold up the sugar sheds. “I’m going to take the fingerprints of the buildings: get clay, take impressions and then cast those into glass objects.” He will also work on a glass installation using images created by photographer Cook and draw the sugar sheds and nearby Titan crane.
ALASTAIR COOK
Award-winning filmmaker Cook has been working in large format film and wet plate collodion photography and will be making 10x8 collodion portraits in the sheds of people who have a connection with them or
Why can’t Scotland have a Tate in the town where the sugar came from?