Artwork Data

Title

A sculpture for The Hague

Artist

Andrew Stonyer

Year

1988

Material

Staal, beschilderd

Artwork Location

Address

Theresiastraat, Den Haag

City district

Haagse Hout

GPS data

52.084656330652, 4.3338301788208 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

The Hague has a twinning with the Canadian city of Ottawa. When a cultural presentation took place in the city in the fall of 1988, the sister city donated an artwork to The Hague. As a permanent reminder of the exhibition and the twinning. The maker of this abstract sculpture is the British Andrew Stonyer. He was selected from seven artists by a special committee.

Stonyer developed the sculpture in his own studio, but he built it up from steel plates on site in The Hague. That took him two weeks. It was then unveiled by Jack Verduyn Lunel. According to this then director of the Royal Academy of Art, this sculpture was an incentive to place more work by foreign artists.

In all his work, Stonyer is looking for patterns and how to transform them into a beautiful and meaningful work of art. He explores different geometric shapes such as rectangles and circles, but also regularly finds promptings in our immediate living environment. These can be large traffic flows, the fall of (sun) light and the passage of time. These are themes that recur regularly in his work. He has also researched the use of solar energy in kinetic (moving) sculptures. He has created a number of monumental light sculptures for public spaces in England.

Movement and patterns are also abundantly evident in his sculpture for The Hague. The thin steel plates with their parallel strips and curves express movement from busy public roads. "Because of the openness on one side and the closedness on the other, it mimics the speed of passing traffic," the artist told the Haagse Courant in an interview on November 7, 1988. "I'm happy with this place. It really comes into its own here."

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