Students from Stroud’s School of Art will be representing Gloucestershire in a unique theatrical event to mark the opening celebrations of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Sailing events Weymouth and Portland.
As part of ‘The Battle for the Winds’, each of the seven counties in the south west is creating a large-scale artwork in collaboration with a lead artist. Sponsored by the Cultural Olympiad Arts Council England, the creative brief is for each county to create a giant wind machine, drawing together the themes of Olympic sailing events powered by wind and classical Greek myths and legends.
During the autumn term, eighty art students at Stroud produced first design ideas for incredible wind-catching vessels, incorporating horns, sails, chimes, hot air balloons, turbines, tornados, ships and birds. The winning design, selected by the students and designed by art student John Tucker, is a steel sculpture of a wave of tubular pipes to draw through a flow of air and produce musical sound.
Construction of the full-scale artwork starts this month. The vessel will be unveiled in the Brunel Goods Shed in April 2012 before it travels around the county ‘gathering wind’ to take down to Dorset. It will be a focus at the Olympic torch relay event in Cheltenham in May, and will finally make its way to Dorset in July for the parade through the streets of Weymouth to the beach for a two-night theatrical showcase of The Battle for the Winds.
More info at http://battleforthewinds.com/
Photo: Art student John Tucker's winning design for 'Battle for the Winds'
