Last winter the much-loved crib in Trafalgar Square was damaged beyond repair. Vandals amid the crowds celebrating England’s victory parade for the Rugby World Cup destroyed the nativity stable, stole an angel, broke another and wrecked the crib.
Placed on the north side of Nelson’s Column, Holy Night was a consoling presence. Josefina de Vasconcellos, who had a workshop in the church’s crypt for several years, made the original sculpture in 1964. This year, for one season only, the crib will be the creation of Becky Mackenzie and Russell Bonnett, two third-year Central St Martins students. Six slightly-taller-than-life-size silhouetted figures, representing the six continents rather than biblical characters, stand around an illuminated crib. This will stand on a plinth inscribed “Peace on earth, goodwill to all men”, in the handwriting of six political and cultural figures, including, it is hoped, Sir Bob Geldof and Kofi Annan.
The search for a more permanent replacement for Holy Night turned into an exciting challenge for the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Rev Nick Holtam — even if the new sculpture seems bound to ignite controversy when installed in December 2005. Under the chairmanship of Sir Nicholas Goodison, the selection panel — of which I am a member — was determined to find an artist capable of generating a real sense of inquiry — within a £100,000 budget. The work, it was felt, should not simply be a sentimental account of the Christmas story but should challenge our senses and understanding.
The five shortlisted artists will doubtless generate headlines and debate, notably Mark Wallinger’s empty crib. All the entries go on show at St Martin-in-the-Fields this Thursday, the day after our panel reconvenes to make its decision. The winning crib will take pride of place in the Square from December 2005.
STEPHEN COX
Cox sees his monumental sculpture, Tabernacle of the Nativity, as a rock shelter carved from imperial porphyry. Ideally, Cox wants it carried into Trafalgar Square each December in “a Ceremony of Procession of the Crib” attended by animals from city farms: “cattle, donkeys, sheep and perhaps camels from the Regent’s Park Zoo”. But the crib itself would be relatively small. It will sit on an altar flanked by two enormous wooden boxes, intended as stalls for visiting animals.
Above them is the most spectacular feature: what Cox describes as “a polyptych of large LED or plasma digital screens”. The central screen would be split between the crib’s interior and the interior of the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem. But the other screens would be far less meditative, transmitting in real time images of refugees at Darfur in Sudan, homeless people in London, a birth at Darfur, and a soup kitchen. He would also like net surfers, through simple laptop links, to “edit the material sympathetic to the message of Christmas in a world that never changes”.
SOKARI DOUGLAS CAMP
She plans a large-scale figurative sculpture, made of stainless steel and recycled durable materials, focused on the holy family and Nativity. The shelter hanging above them, made from woven fencing and a floor of palm leaves, would evoke temporary structures erected “anywhere in the Third World”. According to Douglas Camp, “the variety of materials, colour and texture” is intended “as a contrast to the carved stone monument for Nelson and the square”. A palm tree rises from the shelter, like “banners on festive occasions”.
Two farm animals, at once “protective and cheery”, will look outwards from the family group: “I thought they’d be good company for Landseer’s lions.” Just as Cox wants his carved crib to prefigure Christ’s “eventual fate in a rock-cut tomb”, so Douglas Camp would like the baby’s outstretched arms to be “embracing and prophetic of the Crucifixion”. But the most dramatic element in her proposal is the “ narrow beam of light from St Martin’s spire directed on to the Christ child”. His open arms will appear to react to the beam’s force, as if receiving “his fate and ours”. She sees it as the symbolic centre of a sculpture of “a homeless family in an imperial site contrasting poverty and opulence”.
HEW LOCKE
Unlike Cox and Douglas Camp, Hew Locke aims at creating “something small that will draw you in and focus your mind”. Rather than competing directly with the vastness of Trafalgar Square, he wants to make “a small tent. Inside the tent is a smaller vitrine. Inside the vitrine is a smaller nativity scene.” Bent on conjuring a “magical” spectacle, Locke sees his sculpture as “an intensely coloured and bright area” countering the “vast greyness” of its civic surroundings. Visitors will be drawn in by shafts of light, streaming through yellow translucent stars cut out of the tent’s roof.
Once inside the tent, which Locke intends as “a ‘special’ or ‘sacred’ space” where people can meditate, they will find an angel suspended above the crib. But the true focus is the nativity in the glass vitrine, mounted on a black base embellished with four panels of gold leaf. Inspired by Locke’s trips to Italy, “where traditional nativities are generally housed in glass cases”, his scene will be made of dolls, fabrics, found objects and beads. It shows a holy mountain rooted in Locke’s childhood memories of his native Guyana, crowded with brilliantly coloured figures, animals and “a jungle of nature”.
TOMOAKI SUZUKI
A young Japanese artist who makes “full-length sculptures of young people”, Suzuki had to find out what a nativity looked like. Travelling to Florence and Rome, studying Renaissance images, he was also inspired by Gothic sculptors’ ability to convey feeling through bodily gestures.
He wants to carve 12 figures in wood, arranging them in Trafalgar Square enclosed by “a transparent case with a sturdy metal structure and clear walls (UV-filtered perspex or polycarbonate)”. Dedicated above all to simplicity, Suzuki wants to show Jesus lying on a bed of straw, with Mary kneeling in prayer near by and Joseph reclining (above right). Like Locke, he envisages a pink angel floating in mid-air, and wants to contrast the “Middle Eastern” three kings with “Caucasian” shepherds. Unlike Locke, though, he would like most of the figures to stand on a wooden, white-painted platform.
Suzuki wants Jessica Ogden, the emerging British fashion designer, to create all the figures’ clothes. He will choose models to wear the garments, and take photographs as well as filming their poses. Only then will Suzuki “carve from life” in front of the models, before painting them and finalising the whole “intimate” ensemble.
MARK WALLINGER
Since he produced the Ecce Homo statue, the first and immensely memorable sculpture on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, Wallinger brings invaluable experience to bear on this new commission. But he admits that “a crib presents a very different challenge because it has to contend with a million other representations”. Hence his startling decision to exhibit an empty crib, purchased for £70 at Mothercare and brilliantly illuminated at night from a single, powerful light-source.
“But where’s the baby?” asked Holtam at the selection panel session, voicing the question in all our minds. Wallinger replied that his crib is intended to “touch on the vulnerability of bringing a child into the world nowadays”. In his view, “childhood as reported in the newspapers is menaced as never before”. He went on to suggest that “the baby is the source of light”, and wants three security guards (“echoing the three wise men”) to watch over the crib 24 hours a day. Dressed in “standard blue uniform, probably with caps”, they may look reassuring. But Wallinger also thinks that they “serve to recall the threat posed by Herod”. Disconcertingly raw, his radical and uncompromising sculpture “represents both the hope and belief in the arrival of the Messiah, and the fragility of hope and belief in the modern world”.
