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To
the doleful accompaniment of a soundtrack of hammer blows, accordions,
Bagpipes and muttered oaths, especially composed by Alasdair Fleming,
we enter. McKendrick's temple. Before us sits The Great Timekeeper
- an endlessly ticking pendulum around which seven model dreadnoughts
have been placed - perhaps in supplication. In the carefully engineered
half light of the gallery the immediate-effect is overwhelmingly
devotional. But resist the temptation to kneel. Turn to the walls,
around which the artist has are arranged his side chapels. Here
are the altars of the Clydeside religion presented as archaeological
artefact we are gazing on the vanished gods of a lost civilisation
and the simile does not end there.
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McKendrick explains, Iron is fundamental to man's existence. God like it fell from the sky the product of a supernova to be discovered by man in the first Ion Age. But what we are looking at is Mckendrick homage to the people of the second Iron Age. Of course, it's not an entirely original idea. Returning to Glasgow in the 1940s, the colourist J D Ferguson saw the giant ships in religious terms. They were, he said cathedrals of the Clyde. Ferguson however, unlike McKendrick, never had the temerity to realise his vision.
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Iron 2
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