Underlined
“This is the feeling that death does not descend uniformly upon all men ,
but that a more advanced wave of its tragic tide carries off a life situated
at the same level as others which the waves that follow will long continue
to spare.”
Proust.
Like many of his generation who had worked in the steel works, my father
took early retirement, unable to do his job because he just couldn’t breathe.
The surface area of his lungs had slowly eroded, depriving him of oxygen.
He put it down to dust. For years he had worked in the finishing shop at Warrenby,
in a shed open to the elements; planing the edges of steel plates. Dad claimed
the dust was the fault of the crane drivers. Working for piece rates, each
‘drop’ of heavy steel plate boosted their wages, so instead of lowering the
plates ready for him to plane, they simply dropped them and every minute or
so clouds of dust engulfed my dad. What with that and the icy wind whistling
in from the Tees Estuary, it was no wonder his lungs went. The union did nothing,
he said, too intent on upping the pay of the crane drivers. But at least,
he gasped (he gasped whenever he spoke) he had planed the plates that had
made the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
How many stories like this are to be found on Teesside, in the memories of
those who died ‘at the works’ or as a result of the work they did there? Why
not commemorate them? There are so many memorials to those who died in wars.
Wasn’t working in the steel industry itself a battle against emphysema, asbestosis,
cancer and fatal industrial injury? Tony Charles, himself an ex steelworker,
asked these self same questions and the work here in the Arc is the answer,
a memorial to those who gave their lives to making steel.
Why ‘Underlined’? To underline means several things. Firstly, the video of
the welding arc visually underlines the steel curtains (and is also an echo
of the name of the building and the curve of the display area). Secondly,
to underline is to draw attention to, and the men who are depicted on the
curtains or shrouds now have attention drawn to them, they are honoured and
remembered. Thirdly, to underline is to draw a line under, in the sense of
closure. This work offers closure on the not-so-distant past when these men
developed illnesses because of their work, or died doing it.
The work resonates with symbolism. Steel curtains can be drawn, the final
curtain, a shroud, on which is rusted the image of those who have given their
lives in the steel industry. Rust is caused by the passage of time and the
oxidation of metal. The chandelier reminds us that these men had other lives,
homes and families, the world of the domestic. The industrial masks covered
with steel fibres or exhaling steel wool, bring me back to the sound of laboured
breathing; the struggle for each single breath of those with emphysema, asbestosis
and cancer.
Is this simply a memorial? Or is it also a critique of industrial practice?
Does it draw a line under the past or suggest this industrial past is still
with us? As viewers we take our own stories to this work, but what is undeniable
is that it is right and timely to honour these men of steel who we see depicted
here, and the many thousands of others who worked alongside them.
Josie Bland, Writer in History and Theory of Art.
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