This city built by public looks such a sweet place to live

Sculptors Mark Revels (left) and Brendan Jamison with their giant installation made out of sugar cubes

By Amanda Poole

A giant metropolis with sky scrapers, an amphitheatre and a bridge has gone on display at the Ulster Museum – all made from more than half-a-million sugar cubes.

Over the last five weeks, around 5,000 people have helped Co Down sculptor Brendan Jamison and his team create the eye-catching installation.

The giant collaborative artwork was completed this week as part of the 132nd Royal Ulster Academy of Arts Annual Exhibition on the top floor of the museum. The tallest piece is just over 6ft.

Brendan told the Belfast Telegraph he thoroughly enjoying meeting local people, school groups and tourists from Brazil, Australia and the US, who helped make the sweet piece of artwork, sponsored by KPMG, Arts & Business NI and Belfast City Council.

Brendan said: "It got hectic at times but it was a wonderful experience. There was a team of four other sculptors working with me.

"We trained visitors on how to build with the sugar cubes and asked them to construct anything from their imagination with a focus on what they would like to see in a city of the future."

The Belfast Sugar Metropolis can be viewed at the Ulster Museum until January 5.

One lump or 12,000?

Artist sets off fto China to build sculpture of Great Wall using, er, sugar

BY AMANDA POOLE

How many sugar cubes does it take to make a sculpture of the world's biggest wall? The answer, according to Belfast sculptor Brendan Jamison, is 12,000. And he should know as he prepares to travel to Beijing to create a sugar sculpture of the Great Wall of China.

The talented artist is already well known for his unique sugar cube carvings of iconic buildings such as the Tate Modern, the Reichstag and 10 Downing Street's front door.

He is now heading to China to take part in an international exhibition called Walls and Borders – for which he needs 12,000 cubes and 20kg of loose sugar to create his new piece. Alongside the collapsed version of the Great Wall sculpture – which will span three metres across the floor at Ku Art Gallery – Brendan will be exhibiting sugar cube creations of Belfast's peace walls and the Berlin Wall, complete with a Cold War American spy station.

The captivating sugar creations are part of the Irish Wave festival which takes place throughout March at eight exhibitions across the cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

Work by prominent artists from China will also be displayed to celebrate the links between Belfast and its twinned city of Hefei, the capital city of the Anhui Province in Eastern China. Brendan believes it will be a challenge to create the Great Wall's watch towers, which are beautifully designed with curving roofs and arched windows.

"I am very excited to venture to China to participate in such a high-profile international exhibition in Beijing," he said.

"I'm looking forward to meeting the Chinese artists that are part of the project and hopefully we can generate future exhibitions of their artworks in Belfast.

"Nothing broadens the mind more than working with other cultures," he added.

"The sculptures of the Berlin Wall and the Belfast peace walls will present an exciting international flavour to the exhibition which we hope will offer a strong cross-cultural experience to all those who visit the gallery."

Co-curated by Fion Gunn, Gail Ritchie and Zheng Xuewu, the exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland, Belfast's Queen Street Studios, BIGsmall Artists in London, Belfast City Council, Dublin City Council, Cork City Council, Embassy of Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, CIT-Crawford College of Art and Design, Irish Centre Shanghai and the National Sculpture Factory in Cork.

Walls and Borders opens on March 13 at the 3C Creative Mall in the 798 Art District of Beijing and continues until March 26.

For more information visit brendanjamison.com

Background

Brendan Jamison studied for six years at the University of Ulster where he gained a First Class BA Honours degree in Fine and Applied Arts in 2002 and then the postgraduate degree of Master of Fine Art in 2004.

Over the past eight years, his artworks have been widely exhibited throughout the world with shows in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Italy, America, Canada, New Zealand, India and China.

He has also been awarded residencies in New Delhi and New York and has produced works made from sugar cubes, wool, wax, wood and bronze.

Ardglass tower crafted in sugar

     A County Down landmark has been immortalised in a novel substance more often found in tea than in architecture.

     Isabella's Tower, the 19th century folly located in Ardglass, has been crafted by acclaimed sculptor Brendan Jamison.

     Brendan, who made headlines with his sugar sculpture of 10 Downing Street - currently in the Prime Minister's front room - applied his sweet skills to Ardglass after receiving a commission from a Belfast couple with fond memories of the seaside village.

     Brendan, who has an honours degree in fine art, has previously recreated Bangor Town Hall and Helen's Tower in sugar cubes.

A CO Down sculptor has used 5,117 sugar cubes to recreate the front door of 10 Downing Street for a contemporary art exhibition at the Prime Minister’s London home.

     Brendan Jamison (32), from Bangor, is the only artist from Northern Ireland involved in next year's exhibition that will celebrate and showcase the

EXCLUSIVE

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BY AMANDA POOLE

best of UK talent to visiting world
leaders.
      Brendan said he was delighted to be one of eight artists involved in the show, which will run for three months

from February. His work will be displayed on a bureau in the front hall of Number 10.

    The artist has sculpted models of Bangor Town Hall, the Reichstag in Berlin and the Tate
Modern, but says he was honoured to be given the challenge of creating a model of the door on the UK’s most famous street.

One lump or 250,000? Cubist masterpieces from the artist who sculpts with sugar

BY AMANDA POOLE

Life is sweet for artist Brendan Jamison.

For the 32-year-old has built a remarkable career on his ground-breaking sugar cube sculptures. One is currently the largest such structure in the world.

Now the Co Down man has brought his painstaking talent home to recreate some more familiar structures.

North Down Borough Council commissioned him to make a sculpture of his home town Bangor's most recognisable landmark, the Town Hall.

Made entirely of sugar cubes, it will include the hands on the clock pointing to eight minutes to seven, or 18:52 in the 24-hour clock, also the year the Wards built the Elizabethan Revival-style mansion.

As part of the ninth Art On The Seafront project, Brendan will be in residence in North Down museum until Friday, where he is coordinating free public sugar cube building workshops.

Over the past eight years his work has been exhibited in public, private and corporate collections throughout the world.

The University of Ulster Art College graduate has two other shows running at the moment.

The first, at the Towner Museum of Contemporary Art in Eastbourne, features a five-metre high sugar cube sculpture called 'Tower'. It's the largest sugar cube sculpture in the world, weighs nearly 80-stone and took 250,000 sugar cubes to complete.

The second is running in the Dickon Hall Gallery at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast until September 2 and features the largest pieces from his Co Down-inspired Helen's Tower series.

Thankfully, none of his commissions have ever been ruined by a rogue cup of spilled tea.

He said: "I keep the studio very clean and there are no drinks allowed! Once commissions are complete they are covered in cases, so that prevents damage."

Jamison said he first began to experiment with sugar sculpture in 2003.

"Obviously bronze, stone and wood are quite common, so I wanted to explore a new material and create my own signature style."

He said people are thoroughly enjoying trying out sugar sculpture for themselves during his residency in Bangor.

"Workshops are open to adults and children alike. It's been an overwhelming success."

For further information about the Town Hall sculpture call 028 9127 1200 or visit www.northdown.gov.uk. For more about Brendan, visit www.brendanjamison.com.

The art exhibition with youth on its side

BY AMANDA POOLE

ARTOPOLY by Brendan Jamison, 30.5 x 30.5 cms

ARTWORK created by children from war-torn countries is helping form a new Christmas exhibtion.  More than 160 artists from all over Ireland are exhibiting their work in Belfast city centre alongside paintings by children from Gaza and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The unique show is the brainchild of children's charity Tuesday's Child, and the exhibition can be found in the Old Assebly Rooms in the former Northern Bank building in Waring Street, Belfast.

Belfast Lord Mayor Pat Convery opened the exhibition and said he had chosen Tuesday's Child as one of his nominated charities for his year in office.

"I 'm sure teh citizens of Belfast and the many visitors to our city will at this time will enjoy exploring the wide range of styles and paintings and prints and sculpture on show here this week," he said.

The exhibition is open today and tomorrow from 10am to 8pm, Saturday from 10am to 6pm and Sunday from 10am until 12pm.

Many of the pieces have a festive theme and Orla Sheenan from the charity said the response from the art community had been fantastic.  

"The artists are donating 50% of any sales to the charity, and some will even generously donate all the proceeds," she said.

Artist’s sugar cube sculpture

takes 11000 lumps

By Emily Moulton

SUGAR WALK (2008) Brendan Jamison, scale 1:100, sugar cubes, 60 x 65 x 35 cms, commissioned by Bradkeel Developments for CBRE site at Great Patrick Street, Belfast

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this impressive scale model of a block of apartments destined for Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter is definitely sure to be to someone’s taste.

The 60cm tall sculpture is made entirely from sugar cubes and was designed by Northern Ireland artist Brendan Jamison. Sugar Walk took two months to complete and used a staggering 11,265 cubes.

However, it is not the largest sugar model the artist has constructed. A few years ago Brendan built a 9ft tower using 19,342 sugar cubes.

So what led the 29-year-old to use sugar cubes in the first place? “I guess it all started when I was young,” he said.

“I used to go up to my bedroom where I would play with my Lego. I was always fascinated with building spaceships and robots. So when I went to school my interest in 3D art developed. “This continued into my university life where I started experimenting with different materials.”

After graduating with a Fine and Applied Arts degree from the University of Ulster in 2002, Brendan went on to complete a Masters in Fine Art. It was then he began using the cubes as building blocks for large sculptures.

In October 2006, he completed a residency and solo exhibition at KHOJ, New Delhi, India.

Brendan has also received three awards from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and has been nominated for the 2008 AIB Emerging Artist Award.

And while this latest work is his first commissioned piece, it’s not the first time he’s been asked to create a sugar work. “Last month a PR company from London contacted me about creating scale models of the Sugababes,” Brendan said. “They wanted me to have it done in a month but that was impossible. “I explained that it would take four months per person, essentially a full year and that it was not possible in that time frame. However, I do continue to do small commissions.”

While Brendan is happy to do commission work, he is currently working on a solo exhibition on Helen’s Tower which is to be displayed at an art gallery in Bangor next October. He says he has already spent the past two months working on the exhibition and anticipates it will take the best part of next year to complete. And while he loves using sugar cubes, the artist also loves working with wool and wax. He explained all three materials gave him the freedom to experiment with different ideas.

Brendan Jamison's JCB Bucket Series

By Chrissie Russell

Belfast's many building sites provide the inspiration behind the latest exhibition at Queen Street Studios Gallery. The austere title of the installation: The Aesthetic of Construction belies the quirky nature of Brendan Jamison's work which features 15 wax-dripped sculptures of playful, almost human, JCB buckets that behave like a herd of wild animals running amok in the gallery space.

Art proves ideal for the Board

ARTOPOLY: Brendan Jamison, Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast

Review by Ian Hill (Man About Town)

Artopoly’s centre piece is a vast replica board-game where Belfast’s art galleries replace the hotels of Mayfair and houses of the Old Kent Road. So Hugh Mulholland’s Ormeau Bath’s Gallery would cost you £400 of Brendan’s mock Arts Council grant money, while Bernard Jaffa’s ArtTank is yours for just £150.

Continuing his satire on art’s bureaucracy, Brendan supplies giant Community Chest and Chance cards. One suggests setting fire to a gallery as an art installation. Another promises to be featured in Man About Town.

Royce Harper, presenter of Northern Visions TV’s The Artery slot, had come to launch the exhibition. But first he filled in his voting form for President of the Art World.

Peter Richards, the show's curator persuaded his partner to play another wall game. In it you are asked to identify international art fairs solely from maps of countries that hold these biennials.

Brendan’s provocative and amusing show has its serious side. It examines the possibly unjustified role of ambition and governance in the contemporary art world. There are artists who are great and there are artists who are great at filling out Arts Council grant application forms. And they aren’t necessarily the same people.