The great promenade show: Blackpool, UK (2002)
Great promenade show - Blackpool: 1 | 2
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Tony Stallard. The Frankenstein Project (exterior), (2001). Steel and glass neon, 8 x 2 meters.
Tony Stallard’s Frankenstein (2001) is a hermetically sealed chamber similar to a diver’s decompression chamber, bolted into the promenade’s concrete slab. A strange light emanates from its two portholes, as viewers peer inside to witness a bizarre experiment involving blue neon glass skeletons and the skull of a killer whale. The piece draws on Blackpool’s history of freak shows, which were active until World War II. According to Michael Trainor, “We short-listed this partly because it was the best reference to that part of Blackpool’s history without causing offense.”
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Tony Stallard. The Frankenstein Project (interior view), (2001). Steel and glass neon, 8 x 2 meters.
Other works installed in 2001 include Bruce Williams’s Water Wings, which invokes beach activity with a curved panoramic panel of twisted steel, giving the effect of a detailed graphic image of a swimming child. Peter Freeman’s Glam Rocks responds to flashy Blackpool nightclubs and its beaches with a “family” of three giant pebbles, which contain a system of fiber optics that sparkle with changing colors.
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Peter Freeman. Glam rocks, (2001). Concrete and fiber optics, 1–1.5 meters high.
Reaction to the new installations has been mixed. According to Trainor, there aren’t any tensions between The Art Department’s goals and the Blackpool re-marketing campaign. He adds, however, “If there is any conflict, it’s between us and some local residents. There was a campaign against Frankenstein because, for them, ‘it wasn’t art.’” Trainor also mentions a local radio station, which proposed that Desire be sold as scrap and the money used to fund the resort’s public toilets, considered the dirtiest in the U.K.
With four works installed, three more are on the way this spring. In addition to the world’s largest mirror ball by The Art Department, the new works will include the 15-meter-tall High Tide Organ designed by The Art Department with John Gooding. A musical manifestation of the sea, according to The Art Department, “Its rhythms will reflect directly the surges and swell of water at high tide.” Stephen Hurrel’s This is the Way the Wind Looks will use windgenerated turbines to illuminate a series of panels that interpret wind patterns. Nine other short-listed proposals are now in line, awaiting funding; these include works by Bruce McLean, David Mach, and Pop Artists Allen Jones and Peter Blake, which would be Blake’s first public artwork.
The press release issued by the Blackpool City Council is ambitious; the goal of these artworks is to transform the new South Shore promenade into “a spectacular new visitor attraction set to put Blackpool firmly on the international art map.” How firm and how international has yet to be determined, subject to additional funding to continue the “Show.”
Great promenade show - Blackpool: 1 | 2
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