Leeds

Lone Twin

Lone Twin: The Age of Brick and Bronze

From Saturday 25 November visit Leeds Millenium Sqaure and see Lone Twin's extraordinary journey and find inspiration for your own walk of Art with the BBC Big Screen.

As we enter Leeds City Art Gallery we are immediately confronted by two keys pieces of figurative sculpture; Auguste Rodin's The Age Of Bronze (1875-76) and Antony Gormley's Model for the Leeds Brick Man (1986), the pieces stand abreast a public lavatory. A visit to the neighbouring Henry Moore Institute archives quickly reveals a number of connections between the two works. Rodin's piece, his first venture in figurative sculpture, when first exhibited was widely criticised for apparently being cast from life – the piece seemed too life-like for those visiting the Cercle Artistique de Bruxelles in 1877. In those days casting from life - covering a human body with plaster - was a big no-no, so much so Paul Gsell challenged Rodin to reveal how the piece was made: "When I look at your figure of 'The Age of Bronze' who seems to wake up, fill his lungs with air and raise his arms…my admiration is mixed with astonishment. It seems to me that there is a little sorcery in this science of making the bronze move"

Rodin replied with full details on how the piece was made and the name and location of its human subject – a 22 year-old Belgium soldier by the name of Auguste Neyt, residing in Brussels. For the most part Rodin was believed in his claims to have chiselled the piece from a plaster block.

Antony Gormley's Model for Leeds Brick Man is proudly cast from life – the artist himself suffered the discomfort of being encased in plaster. The piece, as its title suggests, is a model for what would have been a much larger sculpture; in the late 80s Leeds Brick Man was proposed to stand 180ft above the train station, to welcome visitors to the city in much the same way Gormley's Angel of the North would do for those visiting Gateshead some years later. Unfortunately the project was denied planning permission by Leeds City Council, much to the disappointment of local residents.

We were viewing the Brick Man when a local resident left the lavatory behind it and began a discussion on the council's decision not to proceed with the project, Martin, the resident, suggested cowardice was at play: "That bloody lot are chicken, they said no and then what happens? They build that great big bird up in Gateshead and the whole world knows about Gateshead, we could have had it in Leeds, but no. That bloody model should walk out of here and down to the train station, that's where it belongs, bloody idiot council, they're fools"

We thought about Martin's proposal that the model should walk out of the gallery and about Paul Gsell's challenge to Rodin, the idea that the bronze might fill its lungs with air and actually move. We decided we'd attempt to move the two sculptures across the city and towards their subjects – in Rodin's case we assumed his human model would still reside, albeit underground, in Brussels and in Gormley's case records held in the Henry Moore Institute archive suggested the model was cast in his London studio. We walked from Leeds City Art Gallery across the city towards London, on the following day we left the gallery and took a south-easterly path towards Brussels. We walked for six hours each day, re-staging the pose and stance of the sculpture at ten-minute intervals for a digital photograph. Each walk took us to the very edge of the city, beyond the motorway, to the very edge of our map.

Background

Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters formed Lone Twin in 1997 with an ambition to explore contemporary ideas of place, context and travel through live actions and performances.

As a result they have found themselves walking day and night across bridges in Norway, dancing blindfolded in Berlin dressed as cowboys for 12 hours and creating clouds from their body heat in cities too numerous to mention.

They have also recited the London A-Z from opposite ends and met in the middle at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Their varied inspirations range from meteorology to the dance steps of Justin Timberlake.

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