North East Statues

In September 1993, an official ceremony was held to celebrate the arrival of the Bottle of Notes sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in Central Middlesbrough.

30 years ago, Middlesbrough FC were still playing at Ayresome Park, the Middlesbrough Art Gallery was in a converted house on Linthorpe Road, and the first Jurassic Park film was dominating the box office.

But the story of the Bottle actually began way back in the mid-1980s. The decline of heavy industry and the rising levels of unemployment meant new ways to invigorate interest and investment in the area were sought. Commissioning and funding for public art projects flourished. As Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain (as was), Lord Palumbo stated:

“The benefits of art in public places are well documented. It increases audiences; attracts new sources of funding; provides opportunities for the employment of artists, craftspeople, technicians, suppliers, manufacturers of materials, and transporters.“

Development of the Project

The renowned Swedish-American Pop Artist Claes Oldenburg and his partner Dutch-American imagist, curator and writer Coosje van Bruggen were approached by Northern Arts to create a public artwork for the North-East. Gateshead was once in contention as the home for the only large-scale Oldenburg and van Bruggen in the UK, but ultimately Middlesbrough won out. Oldenburg and van Bruggen developed several large-scale site-specific sculptures in major cities around the world, including Chicago, Paris, and Barcelona.

The Bottle began as a series of sketches, first on a nautical theme, but after several site visits and consultation with Middlesbrough Borough Council and Northern Arts, the idea developed into a bottle made up of words. Not so much a message in a bottle, but a bottle made up of a message.

Left: Maquette showing the external text. Right: Maquette of inner text. (Courtesy of Tony Duggan).

The design was finalised and commissioned in 1988, and several maquettes were developed before a fabrication model was made at AMARC at Cargo Fleet, Middlesbrough. The design is complex, and creating text in the shape of a bottle was fraught with challenges. The original intention was to make it out of local materials using local labour but – alas – it was not to be. Instead, the final sculpture was made at AMARC/Hawthorn Leslie in Hebburn, Tyneside using steel from Scunthorpe. Issues with businesses folding and asbestos delayed the project for some time, but the bottle was finally completed in 1993.

Evening Gazette, Wednesday 3rd May 1989.

Although Middlesbrough Borough Council commissioned the project, funding was mainly sourced from businesses and anonymous donors.

Once complete, the sculpture was transported by road from the fabrication factory in Hebburn to its destination in Middlesbrough. Plans were considered to transport it across the Tees on the iconic Transporter Bridge, but it was – unfortunately – too heavy. That would have made one fantastic photograph.

During transportation and installation. (Photos courtesy of Tony Duggan).

On the final sculpture, the white outer is a quote from the diaries of Captain James Cook in Oldenburg’s handwriting:

“We had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole of the passage of the planet Venus over the Sun’s disk”.

Cook was born in nearby Marton in 1728 and is remembered for his maritime voyages of discovery and exceptional navigational skills. The inside blue is a line from a short poem by van Bruggen, in her handwriting:

“I like to remember sea-gulls in full flight gliding over the rings of canals”.

Much has changed in Middlesbrough town centre since 1993. The MIMA building was opened adjacent to the sculpture in 2007, and developments in and around Centre Square are still ongoing. There have been sculptures in Central Middlesbrough that unfortunately did not last as long as the Bottle of Notes, some of which you can read about on our website.

Karis is currently researching a PhD project on “The Secret Life of… Public Sculptures” at Teesside University. As part of this, a series of Vox Pops, and memory-gathering events about the sculpture will be happening over the coming months.