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Description: | As the building of the Pathfoot, the first public building on the University of Stirling campus, neared completion in 1968, it was proposed that site-specific artworks be commissioned for the campus. The main purpose of the commissions was to add to the environment and enhance the everyday surroundings and experience of the University. One piece was commissioned for the University’s refectory and another piece for outdoors within the campus.
The indoor piece was commissioned from Mary Martin, an artist who had a real belief in the value that art can add to environments and the social benefits that could result. She was also interested in the role of art in architectural spaces and had a clear vision of how her artwork could play its part in enhancing architectural space. She believed an artist should: “have an understanding of, and a capacity to enter into, architecture, without destroying it, or dominating it, or distracting from it; an ability to crystallise it in art which is a simple statement on the personal scale so that the work becomes a comprehensive symbol of the building itself, a part of the architecture but not architecture” (Mary Martin, Artist and Architect, 1957, in 'Mary Martin' Tate Gallery, London 1984)
She was unusually politicised for an abstract artist, directly using her art for social benefit in public spaces, rather than tackling social themes in the iconography of her work. In her site specific Mural for the University’s refectory she typically “deftly matched material and form to the setting the work would occupy” (Toby Paterson, Mary Martin and the union of architecture and expressiveness in 'Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin: Constructed Works' Camden Arts Centre 2007).
Another site specific piece commissioned in the early years of the University was Justin Knowles’ 'Two Stainless Steel Forms in White' (1969). In a letter of 1973, Knowles recounts that “the sculpture [was] commissioned for specific siting in relation to the MacRobert Centre, much consideration and depth was given to the siting of the work; the relationship of the sculpture to open and immediate landscape is as vital as [the] relation to the building”.
Both artists seem to have had a good relationship with John Richards, the architect of the Pathfoot Building. Richards attended Picture Committee meetings and stayed up-to-date with progress on the artworks. Unfortunately Mary Martin died in 1969, before the installation of 'Mural Construction', her last large commission, was complete. Richards met with her husband, Kenneth Martin, and others in 1969 regarding the installation of the work and continued to take an interest in the welfare of the piece, assisting in work to maintain its safety, which was carried out in 1977. Knowles also acknowledged the positive relationship he had with the Art Committee, including Richards, by gifting a series of prints to committee members on the occasion of the installation of his sculpture in 1969. The print gifted to Richards is in the Art Collection (2009.3). | Subjects: | Fine Art | Source: | University of Stirling | Address: | University of Stirling
Stirling,
FK9 4LA | Identifier: | STIAC-CLD.2.3.c | Language: | en-GB | Relation: | STIMR-CLD.2.3 |
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