Page 40 - Studio International - July August 1972

PLYMOUTH
Liliane Lijn

If nothing else the White Koan brought a
flurry of excitement to Plymouth. I had chosen
the right site for it and the proportions worked.
These were two serious problems I had to
confront when given the opportunity to make a
sculpture for Plymouth. I wanted a site where
people would converge, where the sculpture
could also be seen from a distance and from
different angles, and where, most important of
all, it could impose itself in some way on the
city. Of course, for it to succeed in this last
ambition the scale had to be just right. To
compete against an avenue of stone and
concrete blocks on a working budget of £i 000
was no laughing matter, so using cunning I
chose a small and at first sight uninteresting
plot of lawn which formed part of the sweep
of Armada Way. This broad shopping avenue
begins up at the Hoe going downhill to the
Civic Centre, and then slowly uphill, lawn after
lawn centering the avenue till it reaches my
lawn (the smallest), and on up a broad green
expanse ending in flagpoles and an unhappy city, with the Koan an empty space cut into it. `contemporary sculpture' ie non/utilitarian,
roundabout—which I was told shouldn't have It was an experience not only of testing a non/functional visual and spatial research, was
been there and had caused a great deal of personal vision on a large scale but also of obviously the object of the City Sculpture
controversy as the cars ruined the beautiful actually bringing that vision to bear on a real Project, and although I was aware of the cryptic
view; and if the roundabout had caused so much environment. The result in my eyes was that and exclusive situation in which artists find
fuss why in God's name had they allowed me to the environment itself seemed to loose its themselves today, nevertheless I found myself
put that 'thing' up ? Being at the top and in the concrete reality, the sculpture remaining what it disconcerted by the total lack of contact and
centre of the avenue the White Koan seemed to was envisioned to be, a token of void and energy. communication between the artist and the
dominate the grey rectangular buildings to each The confrontation between a virgin public general public.
side of it. The small size of the lawn made the totally unfamiliar with experiments of this kind
Koan seem larger and the bushes which grew on and the White Koan was perhaps the most
two sides seemed there to frame it and give it interesting part of my own experience in
dimension. But even more to my liking, its Plymouth. To familiarize the general public, ie Work for Armada Way, Plymouth
presence created an unreal situation. The city people living in urban environments who do not Painted mild steel, neon tube, electric motor
6.1 metres height
was unreal, not a real city but an image of a necessarily frequent art galleries, with Fabricated by Henry Hartley & Co Ltd, London

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