Maggie Hambling and The Scallop
Scallop (2003) celebrates the composer Benjamin Britten and stands on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, near where he lived and not far from Hambling's village.The four metre high steel sculpture is pierced with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from his opera Peter Grimes. Britten was a homosexual and a conscientious objector during World War II, and his memorial was opposed by some.
Hambling describes Scallop as a conversation with the sea:
"An important part of my concept is that at the centre of the sculpture, where the sound of the waves and the winds are focused, a visitor may sit and contemplate the mysterious power of the sea."
Throughout antiquity, scallops and other hinged shells have symbolised the feminine principle.[23] The outside of the shell represents protection, and the inside, the "life-force slumbering within the Earth",[24] an emblem of the vulva.[25][26] Many paintings of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and fertility, included a scallop shell to identify her, as for example in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
The scallop is the traditional emblem of St James the Great and hence was chosen by pilgrims returning from the Way of St James (Camino de Santiago).The scallop shell found its way into heraldry as a badge of those who had walked all the way to the apostle's shrine at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia; later it became a symbol of pilgrimage in general. The scallop shell is also associated with Saint Augustine and his attempts to understand the mysteries of the divine. Ref : Wikipedia
Maggie Hambling and The Scallop
Scallop (2003) celebrates the composer Benjamin Britten and stands on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, near where he lived and not far from Hambling's village.The four metre high steel sculpture is pierced with the words "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" from his opera Peter Grimes. Britten was a homosexual and a conscientious objector during World War II, and his memorial was opposed by some.
Hambling describes Scallop as a conversation with the sea:
"An important part of my concept is that at the centre of the sculpture, where the sound of the waves and the winds are focused, a visitor may sit and contemplate the mysterious power of the sea."
Throughout antiquity, scallops and other hinged shells have symbolised the feminine principle.[23] The outside of the shell represents protection, and the inside, the "life-force slumbering within the Earth",[24] an emblem of the vulva.[25][26] Many paintings of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and fertility, included a scallop shell to identify her, as for example in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
The scallop is the traditional emblem of St James the Great and hence was chosen by pilgrims returning from the Way of St James (Camino de Santiago).The scallop shell found its way into heraldry as a badge of those who had walked all the way to the apostle's shrine at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia; later it became a symbol of pilgrimage in general. The scallop shell is also associated with Saint Augustine and his attempts to understand the mysteries of the divine. Ref : Wikipedia