In July an artwork was brought to our attention through a newspaper clipping from the late 1960s. The article, in an unnamed paper, told the anecdote of a newly commissioned artwork for the The North East Electricity Board‘s Thornaby offices and the thoughts of the company’s employees on the piece.
The artwork came to fruition by means of a competition ran by the organisation who were looking for an artwork for its new £200,000 (almost £5 million today) Tees Area office. The area manager was after something to jazz up the building and said, ‘This is a strictly functional building, but I believe that a functional thing should also make some contribution to the arts.’
The winner of the competition was Brian Hutchinson, Lecturer of Art at the Darlington College of Technology. Twenty-nine at the time, Brian designed the work a year before it went up to meet a brief stating that, ‘the mural should be expressive of the Tees area served by NEEB.’
For his winning piece, he created abstract shapes out of copper to represent the shapes of the area covered by the electricity board. Having designed a mood board and gathered the dimensions of the proposed wall (“The entrance where it was going to go was dark blue engineering brick so I wanted something to work with that.”), Bill Hornby and his assistant Les Baker (from the Engineering Department at Darlington Tech.) worked on the piece.
“I got the idea from seeing a domed copper ashtray. The copper came in pieces and had to be plenished into the dome shape then hammered to give it the texture. It was all done by hand. We had to use the trunk of a tree to plenish the copper over so it would be the right shape. It was all trial and error.” Brian says. “It had different metals welded onto it so it was a mixture of metals, the final piece.” The artwork cost £200 to make, and Bill and Les were paid for their work. Brian was given £100 in prize money with which he brought his first car and a family trip to Edinburgh.
In the newspaper article, employees of the North East Electricity Board are asked for their thoughts on the artwork. One electrical engineer says, ‘From a distance it’s a pleasing shape. But really it does nothing for me, and I think it should have been put where you aren’t forced to go too near it.’ He further adds rather disparaging remarks on the construction of the piece, ‘You can see where it’s been badly soldered. They should have given the design to some of our fitters to do a perfect job.’ The office typists however had nicer words to say, commenting on the lightness of the work and how it had grown on staff since it had been polished (it was later due to be de-polished).
Now eighty-five, Brian lives in Eaglescliffe. He trained as a graphic designer, before becoming a teacher and retiring in 1997. When joining Darlington Technical College in 1967 he successfully established the college’s art department, where he not only acted as Head Lecturer teaching students, but ran evening classes in life drawing for mostly retired people.
Sadly, the NEEB offices in Thornaby are no more and it is unknown what happened to the sculpture. We are looking for more images and if anyone has any leads into photographs of the sculpture, please get in contact us at North East Statues!
A very big thank you to Miki Rogers for bringing this artwork to our attention and interviewing her Dad.
North East Statues 