Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes

© the copyright holders. Image credit: Helen Crute / Art UK

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Notes

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A lattice-like steel structure in the shape of a bottle set at an angle in a bed of bark chips. The 22 mm lattice is formed of a hand-written message (the artist’s) which has inside it another hand-written script (that of Coosje van Bruggen, the artist’s wife) arranged in a spiral. The bottle, the inner text and the cork are all painted in polyurethane enamel – white, blue and black respectively. The outer text is taken from the log of Captain Cook’s first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. The inner text is from a 1987 poem, 'Memos of a Gadfly', by van Bruggen about her childhood in Amsterdam. Appropriately, the sculpture is sited beside a small ornamental lake in a centrally located park.
Title

Bottle of Notes

Date

1993

Medium

steel painted with polyurethane enamel

Measurements

H 910 x W 490 x D 310 cm

Accession number

TS1_HJC_S049

Acquisition method

partly funded by Middlesbrough Borough Council, a Northern Arts grant, and by business sponsorship

Work type

Statue

Owner

Middlesbrough Borough Council

Custodian

Middlesbrough Borough Council

Work status

extant

Unveiling date

24th September 1993

Access

at all times

Signature/marks description

inside bottle: C. O. Cos

Inscription description

outside of bottle, cursive letters in spiral: We had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole passage of the planet Venus over the Sun’s disk; inside of bottle, cursive letters spiral in van Bruggen spiral handwriting: I like to remember seagulls in full flight gliding over the ring of canals.

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Located at

Central Square, Middlesbrough

TS1 2DA

Located close to the Teesside Combine Court and MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art).