Brainstorm Platform 2: Walls have Ears

The latest platform of "Brainstorm" has just been installed in the new Gainsborough Library. There are another two figures in white coats but this time their business is sound and music.

The lady is captured mid performance, having an Elvis moment, collar up, her microphone pulled in close.

The man, perhaps a little shocked to see his colleague letting her hair down, reaches out with his Heath Robinson ear trumpet machine to record the moment for posterity. Like our TV and radio presenters he has to multi-task, simultaneously listening to messages from the brain and recording the music he hears.

As you might expect from "Brainstorm" walls really do have ears. One huge ear attached to the wall which makes a link through to the library's recording studio behind. Be careful what you say the walls are listening...

Brainstorm Platform 1: Vision and Creativity

A new piece of the ongoing sculpture, 'Brainstorm', has appeared on the wall of the New Gainsborough Library. In fact there is both a drawing on the wall and a three dimensional metal sculpture coming out from it.

The sculpture is like a scene of what is going on inside the brain, with the little people in white coats representing the mad scientists, mad artists or mad professors of our imagination.

Like the pie in 'Trivial Pursuits", each platform, as it appears, will mix segments of entertainment, history, arts & literature, science & nature... Sometimes surreal, sometimes comic, the little people and their machines will be busy with everything from making art to measuring gravity.

The platform shows vision and visual art sitting side by side. The scientist is busy turning her eye-lens machine while the artist holds up his palette ready to paint the picture on the wall. An outline of his picture is drawn on the wall behind as if projected from the big metal eye.

The picture on the wall is a drawing of Thomas Gainsborough's famous painting, "Mr & Mrs Andrews", painted during his time in Suffolk. This picture seems to show a romantic scene of a young newly wed couple, but there is more to this than meets the eye. It is a symbol, a statement of their social mobility. It shows the couple in front of their large estate, enlarged because of their advantageous marriage, observation worthy of Jane Austen.

Brainstorm

Why is there a bright gold sculpture of a human brain suspended in the entrance of the new Gainsborough Library in Ipswich? This is Paul's latest (ongoing) public sculpture and he wanted to build something that gets to the core of what the new library is all about.

The brain is at the centre of the library to celebrate this new building as storehouse of human knowledge; but Gainsborough Library does not match your old fashioned idea of a library. It is a place of inspiration for the whole community with its digital sound studio, community rooms, activity programme, cafe, garden, graffiti wall and children's area. For Paul the brain just the beginning, the nerve centre that leads you into this place of inspiration, imagination, and learning.

Watch this space...

The gold brain is the first installment of this growing sculpture. Over the next six months new additions to "Brainstorm" will arrive. Every few months a silver tube will appear on the brain reaching out like a communication line to join onto a platform on the wall. The platforms will have three-dimensional metal figures on them carrying out demonstrations of science, art, history, literature and nature: human endeavour across the disciplines.

About the next platform:

Without giving away too much Paul is working on the theme of vision and creativity for the first platform. It will also pay tribute to 'Thomas Gainsborough', the famous 17th century painter, namesake of this area of Ipswich where he once lived.

Chimps in Space?

Sometimes Paul uses the monkey as a kind of ‘innocent’, an early human who reflects back the absurdity of our ‘progress’. His monkey in the exhibition “Conflict” (Room Upstairs, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, 2004) was given his own little TV room, some booze and nuts and left to watch a constant stream of bizarre TV clips set to music. The images start with a monkey strapped into a space capsule shaking his head in disbelief. There follows a collection of culture and politics from around the world leaving you wondering at the sheer oddness of it all. Who is the “Performing Monkey” us or him?
His brother Mark was the source of all the clips and for someone who doesn’t seem to watch that much TV he has gathered an extraordinary library of strangeness - these were just the tip of the iceberg...

The Magic Continues! (More Monkeys)

The larger monkeys are definitely more popular with men. These three created a stir when they went up to be galvanised in Lowestoft. The guys at BMT (British Metal Treatments)were falling over themselves to be the one to dip them and get a photo. We had a lot of offers to house them that day. Mind you those guys normally dip lengths of motorway central reservation so I suppose the monkeys couldn’t fail. (Click an image to start slide show)



These soldier monkeys were made around the time of the Iraq conflict when our intervention was being questioned. The idea is based on the three monkeys of speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, a sort of re-invention for our more muddled times. They wear a mixture of battle dress from khaki combats to colonial pith helmet - our primitive ancestors taking a primitive stand.

Monkey Magic!

Paul has had a monkey thing going for a while. Monkey sculptures seem to be a bit like marmite - people either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Interestingly, its been mostly women who have commissioned and bought small scale monkeys like these ones. Maybe they bring out a mothering instinct. Some men (particularly my brother in law) are positively scared of them!
(Click an image to start slide show)



Our son, who was only about 4 when Paul made the first one, used to have a big rapport with the monkey. He would hang out with it in the living room (before it went off to an exhibition) and he chatted away to it when he thought no one was listening. He still loves monkeys.