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Art as industrial heritage: deindustrialisation and public sculpture in Britain’s steel-making regions, 1976–2020
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Hilary Orange ,
Gemma Almond-Brown
Social History, Volume: 49, Issue: 4, Pages: 510 - 542
Swansea University Authors:
Louise Miskell , Hilary Orange
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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/03071022.2024.2389627
Abstract
This study analyses the emergence of steel industry-related public sculpture in Britain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The creation of these sculptures is viewed as part of the response of local authorities, artists and community groups to the large-scale loss of steel-makin...
| Published in: | Social History |
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| ISSN: | 0307-1022 1470-1200 |
| Published: |
Informa UK Limited
2024
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66226 |
| Abstract: |
This study analyses the emergence of steel industry-related public sculpture in Britain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The creation of these sculptures is viewed as part of the response of local authorities, artists and community groups to the large-scale loss of steel-making jobs and infrastructure in Britain since the mid-1970s. It posits that the rapid demolition of redundant steelworks plants after closure erased many of the physical reference points to steelmaking in its traditional heartlands, creating a material void which public sculpture has helped to fill. While belief in the ability of public art to stimulate urban regeneration lay behind the commissioning of many of these sculptures, especially from the 1990s onwards, we argue that they make more sense when viewed as a form of industrial heritage. Sometimes depicting the skills, clothing or iconic structures associated with steel, sculptures provided visual references to the industry, often in places where it no longer existed, thus becoming important sites of steel industry memory in Britain. |
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| Keywords: |
steel, sculpture, deindustrialisation, urban regeneration, industrial heritage |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Funders: |
AHRC 0000-0003-1279-1199 |
| Issue: |
4 |
| Start Page: |
510 |
| End Page: |
542 |