Evocative art: The Family of Man, To Give Light and The Siren Installation

Last week I accompanied my father to a summer’s evening concert at Snape Maltings. I am old enough (just) to remember being driven past the old Maltings when it was being converted into a concert venue from 1965 to 1967. It was one of the earliest examples of an industrial building being repurposed for arts use. The whole site has expanded considerably over the intervening five decades. As well as the main concert hall there is now the smaller Britten Studio, rehearsal rooms, cafes, restaurants and bars, holiday accommodation and a variety of retail outlets including the Snape Antiques Centre and The Maltings Gallery.

The Family of Man is an unfinished sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, which was created in the early 70s and unfinished at the time of the artist’s death.

All round Snape Maltings has pitched itself as a cultural centre and as such hosts visiting art installations that are placed amongst permanent works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

‘To Give Light (Northern Aspirational Charms)’ (2018) – Ryan Gander. Close-up of No. 3 Southern Lighthouse Optic (1871)

When I was at the Maltings back in June, for a sublime performance by Vox Luminis as part of the the Aldeburgh Festival, a fitting installation was on display called ‘To Give Light (Northern Aspirational Charms) by Ryan Gander.

‘To Give Light (Northern Aspirational Charms)’ (2018) – Ryan Gander. Commissioned by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, as part of Great Exhibition of the North, 2018.

1 Lighthouse lamp (1847) – the gas-powered lamp from the first coal-gas powered lighthouse in England, in Hartlepool
2 Cat’s Eye (1934) – invented by Percy Shaw (1890-1976), born in Halifax
3 Southern Lighthouse Optic (1871) – the optic (lens arrangement) from the first lighthouse to use electricity in Marsden, South Shields
4 Incandescent Light Bulb (1860) – invented by Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), born in Sunderland
5 Geordie Lamp (1815) – miner’s safety lamp invented by George Stephenson (1781-1848), born in Wylam, Northumberland
6 Cloisonné Vase Lamp (1878) – the first lamp to use an incandescent light bulb at Cragside, Northumberland; Cragside was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity
7 Quick Break Light Switch (1884) – invented by John Henry Holmes (1857-1935), the light switch was designed and patented in Newcastle upon Tyne
8 LED light (1907) – the technology behind LED (light-emitting diode) was first discovered by Captain Henry Joseph Round (1881-1996), born in Staffordshire
9 Flamborough Lighthouse (1674) – built by Sir John Clayton in Yorkshire, the first lighthouse in England
10 Safety Match (1824) – the world’s first friction match

‘To Give Light (Northern Aspirational Charms)’ (2018) – Ryan Gander. The walking couple give you some idea of the scale of this work.

Last week, we saw another art installation had joined ‘To Give Light’. Round the other side of the Concert Hall, near the main entrance, there is a slightly raised mound between the Maltings and the River Alde. Set on the lawn, unmissable and incongruous, currently stands a fisherman’s hut complete with ‘A’ board pavement signs.

The Siren Installation – Roger Hardy. Commissioned for ‘Siren Festival’ Aldeburgh, 2019.

However, there’s nobody selling fish from this hut. Instead, a small crowd of carved people trapped inside the hut gaze out at our world in dismay at the polluted and damaged oceans. (This work was originally sited on Aldeburgh Beach facing out across the North Sea. It had been commissioned for the Siren Festival, Aldeburgh.)

The Siren Installation – Roger Hardy. (2019) Humanity separate, desolate gazing out at the damaged marine environment.

The pavement advertising boards draw our attention to the plight of marine mammals and

The Siren Installation – Roger Hardy. (2019) Announcing marine mammal destruction.

the sign written boards hanging on the hut further detail many of the shocking facts regarding the precarious state of the oceans.

The Siren Installation – Roger Hardy. (2019) Rising sea levels.

‘Siren’ is an ecological art installation that disturbs and informs. It is the type of intriguing and evocative work that affirms a place for visual culture within the wider environmental discourse.