NS4864 : The Gilmour Street GIANTS
taken 10 years ago, near to Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland
A notice pinned to a wall near the sculptures reads as follows...
The Gilmour Street GIANTS
The Gilmour Street GIANTS is a sculptural project which was born from specific drawings made during a six week "Sketch-book Group". The group was initiated by Mandy McIntosh, Creative Arts Coordinator with the NHS NetWork service.
The NetWork service is a vocational rehabilitation employability service, which focuses on mental health, employment and well being. The service encapsulates several aspects of working, including meaningful activity and creative work.
The idea to make Giants came from a desire to enlarge a primitive human drawing someone had made, a wish to see the drawing at twenty times its own size so that it towered over us. It's hard to say why, except that notions of shrinking things or expanding particular objects really appeals to human beings.
We do enjoy becoming Gulliver or the people of Lilliput in relation to things even if that object is sprung from the imagination of someone else.
These Giants are all born from the imagination, and are all larger than life in some way, slightly over the human scale, an elaborate ogre, a little donkey, a geometric "Disco Dave", a lunar twin, A FACE, a disembodied head, a taller Slab Boy, a Lady With A Fan.
Standing on the platform of Gilmour Street train station, our GIANTS draw attention to the people who made them, all people who lived with mental health
experiences. The GIANTS also represent a team. They are all going somewhere and they are all waiting for the train. Meanwhile they remind us that often people with mental health issues are marginalised and discriminated against. In their minds they may shrink down to smaller versions of themselves. In stark contrast these works come from people who are growing through positive activity, expanding through work and engagement with their community in real terms, Bigger people.
These sculptures were realised with the support of tech facilities at West College Scotland and each one was improvised and built under the direction of each individual artist according to their own ideas. We would again like to extend a huge thank you to Heather Collins at Scotrail for her continued support in these works.
The artists are, from left to right, David Thomsom, Alan Madden, John Wilde, Douglas Laing, Lewis Grocott, Mandy McIntosh and Sarah Lawrie.