Category Archives: Sculpture & installations

With love from Mireille Zagolin

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It is raining and I am cold when I meet Mireille Zagolin at her studio in Nyon near Geneva. Her warm welcome includes a huge mug of hot tea. We chat. She is at once effervescent and charming.

Mireille Zagolin 1

She tells me how, already a wife and mother, she took up painting more than twenty years ago. Sculpting began ten years ago. However, working with oil on canvas is her primary passion. In this medium she can let her imagination fly. Her spirits range far and wide on a hunt for inspiration. By contrast, she has found working with clay appeals to a much more personal, inner part of her being. I see she has difficulty putting this into words. To change the subject: whose work does she admire most? No surprises: Nicolas de Staël and Camille Claudel.

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Untitled, 1990, 60cm x 40cm, paint on silk

Amazingly, Mireille has taught herself to paint and to sculpt. It is obvious that she has talent in abundance. I ask about her best creative moment. “My first exhibition!” She says without hesitation. “It was a great success… and a huge adrenalin rush!” She sold everything bar one silk painting which she shows me. It is delicate, feminine and floral. It heralds her beautiful stuff to come.

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Inevitably, I ask about her worst creative moment. This is the only time during my visit that she is not smiling and laughing. She admits that she has never been asked this. She is silent for a minute. Her face clouds over. Eventually she says “It is when I lose that intimate connection with a clay I am working on; I can’t move forward.” There is the key word: “intimate.” Everything that she creates has a profound air of intimacy together with a distinct femininity. Whatever the medium, her work exudes sensuality and is suffused with love.

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My King, my Queen, 2013, 60cm x 60cm, oil on canvas

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L’amour en voyage, 2013 80cm x 80cm oil on canvas

To visit Mireille’s studio is to be dazzled by striking passages of colour and seduced by beautiful bronze curves. I leave with two of her stunning new canvases in mind as I head out into the rain. But I won’t be cold. I have had a wonderful and warming afternoon. Thank you, Mireille.

The Kindertransport statue, Liverpool Street Station, London

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I arrive at Liverpool Street Station in London amid determined commuters and disorientated tourists. Something catches my eye as I head up the stairs past McDonald’s. I find myself in front of a modern statue in bright bronze of a collection of five children. They are standing still and looking around. They don’t seem lost. Their features remind me of Jewish friends I have worked with.

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This is about the Kindertransport. In 1938 and 1939, ten thousand unaccompanied Jewish children were transported to Britain to escape persecution in their hometowns in Germany and Austria. These children arrived at Liverpool Street station to be taken in by British families and foster homes. Only a few were reunited with their families after World War II.

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This 2006 commemorative statue is the work of Frank Meisler and Arie Oviada. It is beautiful, precise and poignant. The children are poised and proud. Their heads are held high. They are determined. They are looking to the future. They do not carry themselves as victims. Their faces radiate hope. A greater innocence is underscored by the youngest girl clutching a teddy bear. The young boy maybe brings musical talent with him; he has a violin case by his side. The tallest girl’s pubescence has been captured to perfection.

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However, each child has a tag with a number. Behind the group is a short section of railway line. Both tags and rails serve as disconcerting reminders of what might have been had they not been brought to Britain. Numbers might have been tattooed on their arms and railways might have brought them to Auschwitz or Belsen rather than to Liverpool Street.

Talking Beautiful Stuff is about the narrative behind any output of the human impulse to create; this beautiful stuff has narrative by the ton. Once again, I am struck by how really, really ugly stuff can be the source of inspiration for really, really beautiful stuff.

And if this was not testament enough to the human folly and cruelty of the 20th century, twenty metres away is the marbled roll of honour with the names of 900 (yes, 900!) employees of the Great Eastern Railway who lost their lives in the Great War of 1914 to 1918. I realise that, had they survived, they might have witnessed the Kindertransport. I feel tears in my eyes and head for the bustling sanctuary of the London Underground.

The Kindertransport commemorative statue was sponsored by the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief.

Roger Bunting’s “Every twenty minutes” landmine medal

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Can beautiful stuff talk about ugly stuff?

Antipersonnel mines became a major issue for international public concern in the mid-1990s. As a TV cameraman, Roger Bunting made award-winning documentaries about the horrific impact of these weapons in Afghanistan and Angola. His most highly acclaimed film, made for the International Committee of the Red Cross, is an instructional film for surgeons about mine injuries. It is both brilliant and sickening.

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On retirement, Roger decided to study fine arts. A first class honours degree was inevitable. One of his 2005 classroom works was a 7cm x 7cm caste bronze medal: “Every twenty minutes.” It became part of a Europe-wide touring exhibition of medal design. The appeal of the piece lies in its inherent paradox: the beautiful representation of the unknowing split second before the awful detonation.

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To pick up the medal is to feel a smooth, pleasing, bronzy weightiness. To inspect it and to turn it over in the palm of your hand is to confront a terrible reality.