IOTA, Crown Road Wall, Inverness, permanent installation

COMMISSIONED by Inverness Old Town Art (IOTA) as part of a series of public art installations in the city, Mike Inglis’s Cathedral is a dynamic new edition to the Inverness streetscape. Part of its success is that it is very much an open work in terms of narrative interpretation, much like the burgeoning city actively redefining itself.

Mike Inglis and Forty Pockets (courtesy IOTA)

Occupying a sloping site on Crown Road leading directly down to the High Street, a vista of rooftops, spires and distant hills when seen from above, the triptych itself is a progression from urbanity to wilderness. Inglis has incorporated a variety of influences into his design drawn from urban youth culture, civic legend and Scottish/Highland myth. The artist’s multi-layered approach derived from screen printing, graphic design and street art combines decorative and symbolic elements very effectively to evoke contemporary aspiration, history, memory and mythology in relation to life in the Highland capital.

Use of decorative patterns of tile designs from Inverness Cathedral and the Town House, tattoos derived from Celtic and Pictish Art, textures from weaving in grasses and wool by Angus McPhee (1916-1997) and the architecture of the iconic bouncy Grieg Street Footbridge all intertwine in an artwork which is bold, considered and exuberant. Like the attitude of its figures, the artwork as a symbol of the city strikes a stylistic pose – a refreshing, unapologetic and somewhat defiant “I am”.

From pedestrian street level or viewed directly from the road, the linear elegance of Inglis’s design, a stylistic fusion of Art Nouveau, Comic Art and Graffiti, can clearly be seen. Use of black and white, together with carefully balanced sections of opposing colour – forest/ new growth green and red/crimson – create a strong and unified composition. The graphic or drawn elements are also finely tuned, a combination of delicate organic tendrils of Aubrey Beardsley-like foliage, bold pattern, comic style teenage warrior figures and the suggestion of delineated graffiti tags in upturned tree roots.

Treatment of the bridge within the central panel from the solid infill of the foreground to the more open and delicate treatment of the suspension span moving into the distance, creates a wonderful sense of moving between past and present, from urban dwelling into wilderness. This is also mirrored in the progression from panels one to three, from the formal design of open city gates to the evocation of wild overgrown spaces on the outskirts of the city.

View down the High Street

Teenage figures, some masked, defining them as deer or wolf clan, dominate the outer panels, while in the central panel the figure of “Forty Pockets”, still remembered by older Invernessians, stands by the Grieg Street Footbridge. This central figure from the 1950’s , wearing all the clothes he possessed, is part of civic folklore but also a symbol of homelessness. Memories of another resident are less distinct; an aged gramophone with foliage springing like music from its core reminiscent of a World War I veteran who once entertained passers by along the River Ness.

While Inglis suggests in the embrace of figures in panel one and the open gates a sense of community and belonging, there is also a sense of a passing phase here in the dominance of adolescent figures. The outsider figures represented in the central panel also provide a counterfoil to emblematic civic pride. There is interesting tension in this work between ancient systems of belief and belonging, in the totemic clans figures as symbols of identity derived from contact with the natural world and the displacement of contemporary urban society.

Tracksuits are the dominant clan badge here. Thankfully tartan, arguably a symbol of Victorian militarism rather than indigenous identity, is relegated to the barest flash in the tangled undergrowth of panel three, part of a cycle of growth and decay – of old beliefs and new. Cathedral is a work that benefits from multiple viewing from multiple viewpoints.

The installation under streelight

Viewed from the upper walkway connecting Stephen’s Brae to the Eastgate shopping centre, a different scale comes into play and although from this distance the triptych appears less solid, slightly tacked on to the resurfaced wall, the progression of figures, balance of colour and rhythm in the composition are still convincing. The strength of Inglis’s design is in his graphic ability to make Signs out of signs, reinstating the symbolic power of design in lives both ancient and contemporary.

As a visual statement that could exist nowhere else it resoundingly succeeds, as an interpretation of a city within a landscape and as a work of public art that thankfully raises more questions than it answers.

With the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery set to close during the winter months, the Crown Road wall may well be one of few places where we may contemplate our own culture and history. Perhaps hidden corners will give way to public recognition once the teenager grows up.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IOTA