Date:	20 - 27 March 2010
Artist:	New British Art group
Location:	Picketstone, near St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan

Sculpture exhibited to public: Saturday 20 & Sunday 21
March 2010, 4pm-8pm
Flight of the sculpture:
Saturday 27 March 2010, 4pm

New British Art unveils the 'Blue Bell Hangar Project' an experimental sculpture which is the result of a collaboration between 7 artists of the Cardiff based group.

Taking its form from the experimental tetrahedral kites of historical innovator Alexander Graham Bell, the sculpture draws its meaning from a historic context strongly associated with the birth of man-powered flight and the spirit of experimentation ushered in at the beginning of the 20th Century.

The event opens on the 20th March at the Blue Bell hangar, at Picketstone, near St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan offering an exciting opportunity to view the large scale sculpture in a monumental space, before an attempt to fly the sculpture will be made by the artists the following week. This flying experiment will be documented by award winning filmmaker John Minton, leaving a record of the object's existence and its passing. A publication with writings, drawings and other images will follow.


The Sculpture and its context in brief

The project is ambitious in physical scale and draws its meaning from a historical context strongly associated with the birth of man-powered flight and the spirit of experimentation ushered in at the beginning of the 20thC. It could be seen as an ambitious utopian metaphor worth re-invoking at the outset of the 21st.

The kite was made and flown at a moment in history when mechanical and scientific experimentation was producing a new world aesthetic: functional form was infiltrating the visual arts and modernism was seeded. Bell?s Cygnet resembles a modernist sculpture. A great dark mass which, from a distance, seems to float impossibly above the ground and forces the viewer to question their experience of the physical world and the imagined interior of this object. It is a physical conceptual poem. A sculpture.

The sculpture will be made, like Bell?s, from many tetrahedral modules: 1604 to be exact. This will produce a sculpture when the modules are united that is about 40 feet long and 12 feet by 12 feet by 12 feet in triangular section.


Group Profile - New British Art (The Cardiff Group)

New British Art is a group formed from a wide range of artists that includes sculptors, painters, printmakers and film-makers. The group is made up of early career and more established fine art practitioners working across the range of disciplines and has grown from an informal meeting of artists over a number of years. The group was formalised as an artist led organisation in 2009 when a constitution was adopted.


The organisation was formed to:

enable ambitious art projects to be completed by individuals or collaborations within the group and wider artist community

administer exhibitions or projects for members of the organisation

encourage younger artists to continue their art practice after leaving art school through, for example, the provision of studio fellowships, exhibiting opportunities and mentoring

make funding applications where appropriate to facilitate the work of the organisation or member artists.


Other Outcomes, reflection and dissemination

The filming of the event will be undertaken by Bafta winning, Bristol filmmaker John Minton. It will be a documentary record of the blue bell hangar project made available for publication on internet and possibly through other fine art screening venues. It will record the construction and attempted launch of the sculpture. The film will be a record and focus for reflection upon the object?s existence, our ambitions for it and its passing. Opportunity will be provided for a more individual focus on the breadth of metaphor through the production of a small book of short associated and interpretive essays and images.