Take Flight

Strolling along the River Wear with a hoolie blowing in me ear, there was lots to see through watery, wind blown eyes. But knocking all the other stuff off its perch was this series of advancing steel girders, increasing in size and motion called Taking Flight.

Taking Flight was commissioned as part of St Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project by Tyne and Wear Development Corporation in 1996-97, and was designed and made by artist and blacksmith Craig Knowles.

From a distance, the large body of a bird can be seen upright and erect, wings outstretched as if preparing for flight. The sharp edges of the primary and secondary feathers cut into the skyline with harsh jagged edges as if skirting the wind with me. Tippy toed and balancing precariously, the bird looks as if it's just about to become airborne from its riverside resting place.

We walked around the promontory to get a better glimpse.

Five steel girders increasing incrementally grow from the cobbled anchor grounding them. First, a boltless, perforated post in steel singled out and galvanised against this bitter North east weather for longevity. Like my scarf but a permanent protective layer on steel. But on closer inspection, the bolt holes don't line up, like they're breaking their form and function.

Then another, with pieces peeled back like a banana skin, bending down suggesting motion and growth, but bolted this time. Maybe something changing form, from one thing to another. Leaving one life for another?

To give some context to this steel's transformation and the journey from steel girder to bird, we need to understand what stood here before.

Sunderland's river has a roving past. From medieval times, the river had a rich history of shipbuilding. The depths of its riverbed and the tight-lipped entry to the Wear made it ideal for industry. The wealth of coal brought about huge regeneration of its tired untidy dwellings in the 19th century when the Wear became home to collieries, shipbuilding and the manufacture of glass. At one point, a quarter of the ships sailing on the world's seas were manufactured in Sunderland.

Image courtesy of Sunderland Antiquarian Society

The regional moniker of Makem was allegedly derived from the shipbuilding industry and refers to people on the banks of the Wear who made ships for other people who then took them - “we mack 'em and ye tack 'em”!

By 1900 Sunderland was the powerhouse of industry and garnered a name as the greatest shipbuilding town in the world as this late 18th century detail from Rain's Eye Plan of Sunderland shows.

Less than 100 years later, in 1988 the final shipyard on the Wear had closed its doors.

Look again at the steel. This is integral to both the sculpture and the ships that were built from it. Creating a frame and structure for both river dwelling vessels.

Could it be then, that the artist is looking at the transformative properties of steel? Perhaps suggesting regeneration, moving from one thing to another? New uses for old materials? A return to a more nature-based place, turning our backs on the industrial nature of the Wear?

The third stage of the sculpture looks to me like a cormorant plunging into the water, streamlined and beak, needle sharp to catch fish. Cormorants can dive as deep as 150ft, propelling themselves through the water using their incredible agility in diving. Skilled anglers, the hook on their beak aids them in skewering the silver wriggles of fish.

Then in the fourth plinth, the cormorant has risen and is drying its wings.

Despite having a preen gland (have you ever seen birds peck at the base of their back and then run their beaks along their feathers? This is to add a waterproof layer to keep them dry and buoyant) cormorants lack the overall oily feathers of ducks and so need to stand cruciform to dry like woollen jumpers on a washing line.

I loved the angular folds and bends of its wings, mimicking the long necks of the Meccano-like cranes on both ships and shore.

The final steel girder is 3.5 meters tall and holds a huge cormorant ready to embark on flight, its wings just catching the wind, over the Wear. Clumsy flyers, cormorants are inefficient in the sky, but it cuts a sharp shape up here overlooking St Peter's.

I loved the silvery cold feel of the steel. It was Baltic to the touch. The metamorphosis from girder to bird was clever and showed an idea take life and flight and suggested that over time, things can regenerate and take a different shape, literally Taking Flight.