Menongous; Big Art

As promised last Thursday, this week I am sharing a few of the installation art pieces/monuments to be found at Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen. 

....BUT FIRST...

To have truly life-long friends is a rare thing. Like family, there are times apart, long silences, reunions, ongoing fun and mayhem, ups and downs and through it all the bond is unbroken. Thank you, "Aitch", and welcome to the OAP club!

Right, back to the post proper. These are just some examples; apparently, there are quite a few more to be discovered in the park - a good reason to return! Where there was no info plaque, I have cut and pasted info from a Visit Aberdeen leaflet. I could have saved the last three for the Menonday posts, but I have plenty lined up there, and anyway, these were so much a part of the visit to Hazlehead and integral to my enjoyment of it that they deserve this independent post. Enjoy!

Piper Alpha Memorial by Sue Jane Taylor, Dingwall, Scotland, born 1960. Bronze with gilt and Corrennie granite plinth. The memorial to the 167 men killed in the Piper Alpha disaster on 6 July 1988 is in the North Sea Memorial Rose Garden and was unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1991. 

Archaic Form & Bench by Horace Farlowe, Robbins, North Carolina, USA, 1933-2006, Kemnay and Caran granite, 1996. Horace Farlowe has made stone sculptures all over the world, in places as diverse as Africa, Italy, Scotland, and North Carolina, where he attended university. This piece is meant, as are many of his works, to engage the viewer on many different levels. The abstraction and interplay of positive and negative space allow us to see the sculpture’s surroundings in a different light. Farlowe also intended it to be a seat, lessening the physical distance between art and its spectators he saw as so oppressive in gallery settings.

Division by Gerald Laing from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, 1936-2011. Galvanised steel painted in vibrant JCB yellow, Division is a startling sculpture which harkens back to Laing’s brief spell as a member of the American Pop Art movement in New York. It is purposefully set in a garden, so that in Spring it may rival the blossoms for their colour. Gerald Laing, an internationally acclaimed sculptor, was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1936 but moved to Scotland in 1969.