Sunday 17 January 2021

'Magnet' Off To 'The Black Gold Museum', Riyadh

Pretty soon 'Magnet', my toy tower sculpture, will be leaving my studio and heading off to its new home at The Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (due to open in 2022), where it will enter the museum's permanent collection.


Interior of the Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (due to open in 2022)

It'll be odd not having Magnet around anymore as it's one of the earliest sculptures I made (way back in 1999) and has been a colourful presence around the place for over two decades - especially since most of my later sculptures tend to lean towards the brown end of the colour spectrum. Two compensate for its absence I think that maybe the next piece in my giant face mask wall sculptures series will be made using plastic toys.

 

Toy tower sculpture, 'Magnet', 1999, by artist Wayne Chisnall

'Magnet' is part of a series of four wheeled tower sculptures (the others being The City, Book Tower and Fetish); each relating to a different aspect of our relationship with material possessions, and how our psychological attachment to large quantities of physical objects limit our freedom and mobility.  


Exterior of the Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (due to open in 2022)

Originally titled 'Toy Tower', it was renamed 'Magnet' after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that he had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery.

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