Putting a large concrete block used to protect coastlines against erosion at the top of a cliff rather than at the foot of it is odd, the artist Ryan Gander cheerfully admits.
Calling it art may also get some people’s backs up too. But that’s fine. “I love Korean and Japanese food and I detest pizza,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have pizzerias.”
On Friday Gander’s new work will be unveiled to the public, the first in an ambitious new sculpture trail planned for the Yorkshire coast.
Positioned on Scarborough Castle headland, with its incredible coastal views, the work is in the form of a dolos, the concrete structures used as a defence against coastal erosion.
Gander said he loved the shapes. “They are giant, concrete, brutalist-looking geometric forms that tessellate well together on the back of a lorry so they can be moved and they get placed on a beach in stacks,” he said.
“What I love about them is they are so War of the Worlds, so alien. Dolos don’t seem of this world, there’s something extra terrestrial about them.”
The work is called We are only human (Incomplete sculpture for Scarborough to be finished by snow).
As the name suggests, the work is unfinished and only will be when snow falls on it. But that may not happen so often because of climate change.
After the birth of his third child Gander said he became interested in how his son might well be someone who, in 20 years time, would brag that he remembered seeing real snow in the garden.
“He might be of the generation to say, ‘oh I made a snowman!’ Which is kind of terrifying.
If you take away the snow you’re left with an unfinished sculpture that can only be finished by nature, said Gander. “Because of human interference with nature, we can’t finish the sculpture. It’s like back to front … payback time.”
Gander’s sculpture will be followed 10 days later by the unveiling of three benches for people to sit on along the Esk estuary, near Whitby harbour. The benches, the work of Juneau Projects, are there for people to enjoy the views and contemplate the wildlife.
The sculpture trail project, titled Wild Eye, aims to encourage people to engage with wildlife and marine life along the Yorkshire coast.
Gander’s dolos is cast in ultra-low carbon concrete which incorporates limestone formed from the shells and skeletons of prehistoric sea creatures.
People can sit on it and they will hear audio clips from different voices connected to the project, including specialists from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and English Heritage.
Public sculpture on Britain’s coast is nothing new and it is often divisive; none more so, perhaps, than Maggi Hambling’s 4-metre high Scallop on the beach at Aldeburgh still seen as either a beauty or a blot on the coastal landscape.
Gander said he had no problem with controversy. “The best art is the stuff that when you are on the bus on the way home you are still thinking about. That might be ugly, beautiful, compromising … you might hate the artist. Politically it might not be in tune with what you believe. That doesn’t matter. It just matters whether it bothers you.”
He said he was less interested in how art looked and more in how it made you feel and think.
“If people want to complain about art then they should complain about the conceptual nature of it, not what it looks like. It’s like if you go past someone’s house and you don’t like the curtains, you don’t knock on the door and tell them to change them.”
