Manual Ref* | NFnrNOR040 Show 4 images | 179 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Title* |
Public Sculpture - Rouen Road |
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County | Norfolk | District Council | Norwich City Council | |||||||||||||||||||||
Civil Parish or equivalent | Norwich City Council | Town/Village* | Norwich | |||||||||||||||||||||
Road | Corner of Rouen Road and Golden Ball Street | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Precise Location | In front of Prospect House (ECN building) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
OS Grid Ref | TG233083 | Postcode | NR1 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Setting | On Building | Access | Public | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Commissioned by |
Eastern Counties Newspapers | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Design & Constrn period |
Commissioned 1968 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Date of installing |
1970 |
Exact date of unveiling |
29 April 1970 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Owner/Custodian |
Eastern Counties Newspapers | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Listing status |
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Surface Condition |
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Structural Condition |
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Vandalism |
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Description (physical) |
Jutting out on a concrete plinth at the top of the flight of steps leading to the main entrance of Prospect House Public Sculpture dominates the junction of Rouen Road with Cattle Market and Golden Ball Streets. The concrete base supports a small golden ball squashed under another strip of concrete which supports the largest of the series with a further three set further back between two concrete blocks. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Description (iconographical) |
Prospect House was completed in 1970 to house the offices and printing presses of Eastern Counties Newspapers. The architects - Yates Cook and Derbyshire - adapted the idiom of the new brutalism in their treatment of the concrete panels set over the steel frame. Bernard Meadows had begun his career as one of the sculptors who, according to Sir Herbert Read in 1952, had developed the ‘geometry of fear’, discussed under the entry for Bernard Reynolds’ Triple Mycomorph of 1953 see under Ipswich, Christchurch Mansion. Meadows had continued in this vein during the early 1960s before developing a new idiom, again under the influence of Henry Moore, most notably of sculptures like the Locking Pieces of 1963-64, now displayed at Vauxhall Bridge Gardens. Beginning with his Pointing Figure with Child of 1966 (BM 105) now in Churchill College, Cambridge and in two versions of Help (BM 102 and 103) both of 1966, one of which is in City of Bristol Art Gallery, Meadows turned Moore’s forms into enigmatic dimpled balls which are squashed between larger shapes. Public Sculpture combines this element of Help with a large Golden Ball, apparently liberated from the weight of the rest of the structure in response to the adjoining 'Golden Ball Street' and the large gilded sign of the Woolpack public house, then just around the corner. The idiom of both the building and the sculpture is very different from the earlier offices for Eastern Daily Papers at 3-7 Redwell Street by the same firm in 1958-59. The building is decorated with a plaque celebrating Frances Burges and the publication of the first English provincial newspaper the Norwich Post on the 6th September 1701 (NFnrNOR191) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Photographs |
Date taken:
16/12/2005
Date logged: |
Photographed by: |
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On Site Inspection |
Date: 15/8/2006 |
Inspected by: |
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Sources and References |
Bowness, A., Bernard Meadows: Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1995, BM 115; BOE I, 305; Barnes, Richard, The Year of Public Sculpture, Norfolk, Kirstead, 2001, 42 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Database |
Date entered: 10/10/2006 |
Data inputter: |