Langlands and Bell

Description

This sculpture, like most works of art, invites us to form ideas about it. Its abstract nature suggests that there is no right or wrong interpretation; but many open-ended possibilities. Here is a seat in a circular plane, made as a boundary or enclosure, and defining a location. Carved into the surface on the horizontal plane are groups of letters forming acronyms for the world's airports. The arrangement is formal although the cities are placed in random order. These fifty places conjure thoughts of travel and all that mass movement of people in the late twentieth century implies: communication, company, isolation, time and change.

When we travel, particularly on long-haul flights, we become out of context and out of 'time'. These landing points, carved in stone, offer definition and context as they become terminals of departure for the imagination. They also suggest routes, although the sculpture is not a compass. The places are terrestrial, the means of moving between them celestial. The more we think into all aspects of this sculpture the more we become aware of its poetry and lyricism and all the elements that pull in the opposite direction. This sculpture explores human activity through the places humans inhabit, their furniture, their buildings and cities, now the globe and next the universe. It is the first work Langlands and Bell have made in stone and the biggest piece so far.

Portland stone, chosen by Langlands and Bell for its hardness and neutral colour, is for them an excellent vehicle for the abstract realisation of their ideas. The precision with which this stone may be cut is also appropriate, as they require formal perfection for organic and disordered subject matter. Fifty Cities was carved and installed for Sculpture at Goodwood by Cathedral Works Organisation, Chichester.