Smoggy, Smoggy, Smoggy

‘MIDDLESBROUGH is not all ugly and toxic – not all of it. Many are the people who smile as they take one last view of the place disappearing from sight in the car’s rear-view mirror.

‘CAN YOU HEAR ME?’

But things could be set to change should Middlesbrough get its hands on Anish Kapoor’s giant sculpture, Marsyas.

The huge red tubular structure, which recently filled the massive turbine hall at London’s Tate Modern, is, says the Guardian, looking for a new home.

And Middlesbrough wants it – although it faces a spot of competition from New York and Athens.

But the locals, known as Smoggies, are hopeful. Already Middlesbrough’s best brains are designing a mechanism that can stop the structure from being blown into the North Sea.

If it should go to the north east, Marsyas would rival Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North, the icon that has given Newcastle’s Geordies an alternative identity to the Fat Slags and burly men waving football tops over their heads in January.

Could Marsyas work the same miracle on Middlesbrough?’

Posted: 28th, October 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink