The River (artwork)
Encyclopedia
Victoria Square, Birmingham
Victoria Square is a pedestrianised public square in Birmingham, England. It is home to both the Town Hall and the Council House, and directly adjacent to Chamberlain Square....
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
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An international design competition was held for a central water feature in the square, which was won by Dhruva Mistry
Dhruva Mistry
Dhruva Mistry CBE RA is a sculptor, born in Kanjari, Gujarat, India in b 1957.-Early life and education:Dhruva Mistry , having worked in Great Britain between 1981 and 1997, returned to Vadodara...
. Construction commenced in 1992 and was completed in 1994, when the square was officially reopened by Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
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Mistry's fountain is the largest sculptural piece in the square Mistry's winning design for Victoria Square consists of four sets of works named River, Guardians, Youth and Object Variations), representing youth and eternity. The River features a 1.75 tonne bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
statue of a woman, 2.8 metres (9 ft) tall, 2.5 m (8 ft) wide and 4 m (13 ft) long. The surrounding pool is paved with Wattscliff sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
. Engraved in the rim of the upper pool by Bettina Furneé are the following words from the poem Burnt Norton
Burnt Norton
"Burnt Norton" is the first poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. He created it while working on his play Murder in the Cathedral and it was first published in his Collected Poems 1909–1935 . The poem's title refers to a Cotswolds manor house Eliot visited. The manor's garden served as an important...
by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
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And the pool was filled with water of sunlight, and the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, the surface glittered out of heart of light, and they were behind us, reflected in a pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
(Lotos is an alternative spelling of Lotus
Lotus (plant)
Lotus identifies various plant taxa:* Nelumbo, a genus of aquatic plants with showy flowers** Nelumbo nucifera, the Sacred or Indian lotus** Nelumbo lutea, the American or Yellow lotus...
)
The water in the pool flows at a rate of 3,000 gallons per minute, into a lower pool, in which is another bronze sculpture, Youth. The sculpture is 1.5 m (5 ft) tall and 1.5 m (5 ft) in diameter. It depicts a boy and a girl facing each other at either ends of a fountain. Beside them are an egg and a cone. The surrounding lower pool is also paved with Wattscliff sandstone, on the floor of which is a bas-relief of six large salmon. The combination of River and Youth won a 'Fountain of the Year' award in 1995.
However due to water leak in the fountain, it was only switched on few special occasions from 2008 until a £300,000 restoration was completed in 2010. The work also involved the installation of a new, multi-coloured lighting system.
On either side of the fountain are two large sculptures collectively known as Guardians. The sculptures - made from the same Darley Dale stone as the Council House - are 3 m (10 ft) high, 2.5 m (8 ft) wide and 5 m (16 ft) long. The sculptures are not identical and take features from a variety of animals. They have been derided in the past for having faces like characters in the children's television series Thomas and Friends. On either side of these sculptures are two obelisk-shaped sculptures collectively known as Object (Variations). The sandstone sculptures are 2 m (7 ft) tall and 0.5 m² (5 sq ft). The two obelisks were initially refused by the city council as they were deemed unnecessary but Mistry - who declined to comment on their meaning - urged them to reconsider and they were later approved. They now act as lampstands in the square.