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Miles Thurlow: Black Swan The fruit machines loiter awkwardly in the sand, like a gang of teenagers who’ve left school, with nothing much to do. Some stand casually upright, next to the cement blocks to which they will be bolted. Others are still prone, their undersides not yet drilled and screwed. Electric cables snake quietly through the sand. This is the scene on the west end of Portobello Beach, the part nearest Edinburgh’s sewage works, more often associated with amusement arcades and chip shops than the well-heeled stretch of beach a few paces to the east. This is where Newcastle artist, gallery director and sculpture lecturer Miles Thurlow is installing his subversive temporary artwork, Black Swan. Already, a full-scale digger has been hard at work, clearing trenches for the buried cement plinths and for the seriously armoured, seriously waterproofed electric cables. This art is hard labour for an entire team of workers, involving 13 tonnes of subject matter and a scary palette of electricity and water. As I visit, the machines are being bolted onto their bases, and when the council’s street lighting man starts his night shift, the electrics will be wired up to a lamp post and the games’ flashing light sequences tested. Tomorrow (Saturday), while festival exhibitions open all over town, Black Swan will make its own, very unique debut. This is the third and final commission in the Imagine Porty Prom series; the first was an uncanny animated film projected onto the waters of Portobello Baths, and the second a giant inflatable, cartoonish object which will revisit the beach on weekends through the festival. Black Swan, Thurlow acknowledges, takes a much bleaker approach to its subject. “As a public work,” he says, “it’s quite dark in a way, and not just about decorating, or about how wonderful this place is.” “Seaside towns have this sense of faded glory and grandeur,” he explains, “and as you walk along the prom there are two amusement arcades that are quite typical for British seaside towns. You often find them in various states of decline; I think that they represent something that’s shifted in the way that we deal with these places.” By taking the fruit machines out of the arcade, and isolating them on the beach, Thurlow hopes that people will stop and consider what they say about the place, and also about the wider economic crisis. The Black Swan Theory, after which the work is named, was coined by Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain the existence of unexpected, high-impact events. “It’s a theory that’s been used to predict massive economic shifts,” says Thurlow, “for instance the crash that we’ve just experienced.” The fruit machines look abject and abandoned on the sand, a far cry from the monumental public sculpture of tradition. “They look like they’ve been fly-tipped,” says the artist. “It’s anti-heroic sculpture. That’s quite important for me.” Thurlow has a history of creating anti-heroic public art; when he made NO NO NO NO NO for Gateshead Council, placing the five words in railway arches, his patrons immediately asked him to change it to YES. His public art for Sunderland Council made ironic use of the city’s motto, Nil Desperandum: No Despair. Black Swan, too, is likely to create an atmosphere tinged with sadness. Though the games are unplayable, the machines’ automatic sequences of flashing lights will cycle, day and night, until September 5. They will blink silently through wind, rain and summer sun, peddling their redundant Fruit ‘n’ Nudge, their empty promise of a £5 Jackpot. “I really like the idea,” says Thurlow, “that they’re mute, and just talking or thinking to themselves. I think that’ll look quite melancholy, especially on this open beach with the power station in the distance.” Not yet on their hidden plinths, the machines lean slightly in all directions. The artist confirms that even when mounted, they’ll fail to stand straight. “If they’re totally upright,” he explains, “it becomes architecture, or functional objects, whereas I like the fact that they look like they’ve just been dropped, or they’re just standing there like people.” It’s easy to imagine the response of local people to an untidy work of art that is designed to look like fly-tipping, but the artist has so far been pleasantly surprised. “I’ve been bracing myself for the usual stuff that you expect,” he says, “but people have been fantastic.” Fantastic, that is, apart from the local resident who approaches us while we chat. “You’re gonna have real problems,” he warns us in a distinctive American drawl, “I’m telling ya. If the tide doesn’t get it I guarantee you the kids will.” Thurlow is philosophical about the threat. He’s checked the high tide mark with the regular tractor drivers on the beach, and the games machines, he hopes, will prove reasonably impervious to attack. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s a temporary piece,” he tells me, “and to some extent if that happens it’s fine. It’s an experimental piece… this is run by the community, it’s not inflicted on the community.” That’s a crucial element to the scheme, run by local trust, Big Things On The Beach. The group, made up entirely of Portobello residents, has been commissioning public art for the area since 2004, and prides itself on working at the heart of the local community. “One of the things that we’ve noticed,” says Chairman, Damian Killeen, “is people’s reactions are quite different to something that they think has just been put there by somebody, and something which has been generated from within the local community. I’ve seen people’s attitude change very quickly when I say, ‘well I live here as well’.” Tomorrow’s Black Swan launch kicks off a busy month of festival events for Big Things On The Beach, including an exhibition, artist talks, busking, a street art project, and the irresistible “mobile tea dance for all ages” along the promenade. Added to our 13 melancholy fruit machines in the sand, there is surely something there for everyone. |