Angel of the North - UK's most impressive public sculpture

It started in the early 1980s when Gateshead decided to take art to the public because it did not have its own contemporary art gallery. The early works were so successful that in 1986 a formal public art programme was launched. This was given a tremendous boost during the 1990 Garden Festival in Gateshead with 70+ artworks on display.

Angel of the North

overlooking the A1 Motorway

Gateshead now has a legacy of 50+ major public works by leading artists and received funding from sources like the Arts Council Lottery, Northern Arts and local developers and sponsors. Art has helped reclaim derelict areas eg Gateshead Quays which transformed a former industrial area into an attractive public area enhanced with artworks.

Note that mining ceased on this Gateshead site in the late 1960s. But Gateshead Council's Art in Public Places Panel didn’t decide to earmark the site overlooking the A1 for a future landmark sculpture until 1990.

The Angel of the North is a contemporary weathering steel sculpture, designed by Antony Gormley (b1950). I didn’t know Gormley’s name because he is of the generation of young British artists who emerged recently. He has exhibited work around the world and has major public works in the USA, Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1994 he won the Turner Prize and in 1997 won an OBE for services to sculpture. He has shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Gallery, British Museum and Leeds Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery.

It is located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. The artwork stands on a hill, overlooking the A1 and A167 roads and the East Coast Main Line rail route, south of the site of Team Colliery. Work in Hart­lepool began on the project in 1994, using government art money and private sponsor­sh­ip.

Gormley was selected by a panel and his design proposals progressed with engineering consultants, Ove Arup & Partners. Fabrication contractors visited Gormley's studio to see the Angel models and in May 1997, the fabrication company was chosen: Hartlepool Fabric­ations on Teesside.

A revolutionary approach to the Angel was devised by Hartlepool Fabric­ations working closely with consulting engineers Ove Arup and Gateshead Council. The original body castings of the Angel by Gorm­ley were scanned by the Geomatics Department at Newcastle University and the precise co-ordinates plotted to create an electronic 3D virtual reality.

A panoramic hilltop site was chosen where the sculpture would be clearly seen by more than 90,000 drivers a day on the A1 and by passengers on the East Coast London-Edinburgh main line. The site, the former colliery pithead synonymous with Gateshead mining history, was later re-turfed and the landscape in the surrounding area reinstated.

Completed in Feb 1998, the Angel was 20 ms tall with wings 54 ms across. Due to its exposed location, windloads on the wing boxes were transmitted along the ribs, down the body and into the foundations, to withstand winds of 160+ km/h. Thus, foundations  contain­ing 600 tonnes of concrete anchored the sculpture to rock 21 m below.

The angel was made in 3 parts, the body weighing 100 tonnes and the 2 wings weighing 50 tonnes each; then they were brought to its site by road. Working from scaffolding, workers secured each wing with 88 bolts then welded the plates together. The wings were angled slightly forward to create a sense of embrace. The angel was based on Gormley’s cast of his own body. 

A marquette/replica of The Angel of the North 

valued at £1m back in 2008

BBC

The plaque beside the Angel reads "The hill top site is important and has the feeling of being a megalithic mound. When you think of the mining that was done under­neath the site, there is a poetic resonance. Men worked beneath the surface in the dark. It is important to me that the Angel is rooted in the ground, the complete antithesis of what an angel is, floating about in the ether. It has an air of mystery." The statue was to represent the past, present and the changing times of the nation.

Antony Gormley, Another Place sculptures

in Merseyside

Despite the originally strong opposition, The Angel is now considered to be a land­mark for N.E England. Just in case car accidents might result from the stat­ue's special position near the A1 motorway, trees were planted to hide the sculpture from the road exactly where it passes closest. For those of us not driving around in the UK, the best cultural reference is in the tv detective show Vera (2011-) which uses the Angel to establish its Northumberland setting.

Gateshead Council spent decades putting art in public places, giving the area a national and international arts profile. Later more Gormley’s sculptures (2005) appeared on Crosby Beach in Merseyside, 10 ks from Liver­pool. Another Place consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size fig­ures spread along 3 ks of the fore­shore. The series stretched 2.5 ks down the coast and 1 k out to sea, with an average distance between the pieces of 500 metres, increasingly submerged and re­veal­ed as the tide comes in and goes out. The figures, 189 cm tall and weighing 650 kg, were made from casts of the artist's own body standing on the beach. All of them looking out to sea, staring at the horizon in sil­ent expect­ation.