Belfast Telegraph

Sweet: Over 5,000 sugar cubes were used to recreate the front door of 10 Downing Street

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

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."

"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."

POOLE, AMANDA. "One lump or 250,000? Cubist masterpieces from the artist who sculpts with sugar" Belfast Telegraph,

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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.

POOLE, AMANDA. "The Art Exhibition With Youth on its Side", Belfast Telegraph, City edition, Thursday 16 December 2010, p 25

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Artist’s sugar cube sculpture takes 11000 lumps

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.

MOULTON, EMILY. “One Lump or a Thousand?”, Belfast Telegraph, am edition, Tuesday 11 November 2008, p. 3

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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.

RUSSELL, CHRISSIE. “Brendan Jamison’s JCB Bucket Series”, Belfast Telegraph, am edition, 29 February 2008, p. 18

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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.

HILL, IAN. “Art Proves Ideal for the Board”, Belfast Telegraph, city edition, Monday 22 August 2005, p. 8