The Public Art of Borgloon
We were inspired on Ascension Thursday by Gerry Lynch, who posted this clickbait article about a peculiar Belgian church on Facebook. It didn't take much research to track it down to the town of Borgloon, about an hour's drive from us, at 50°47'41.4"N 5°21'06.1"E if you want to be precise. And it turns out not to be a church per se, buta public sculpture called "Reading Between The Lines", cunningly constructed by the architectural team Gijs Van Vaerenbergh (Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh) to look very different from different angles.
Here are A and F looking out at me through the lines:
And from the other side, you can see how the sculpture neatly frames the real church in the town:
In fact, "Reading Between The Lines" is just one of a number of public art installations around the town of Borgloon organised by the Z33 museum in the nearby town of Hasselt. As you wander through the nearby fields you will come acrossa peculiar twisted cylindrical wooden structure (at 50°47'41.4"N 5°21'06.1"E):
But from the right vantage point, the twists and turns resolve into the Dutch word "twijfelgrens", Border of Doubt - or is it Doubtful Border? The meaning conveyed by artist Fred Eerdekens is ambiguous.
And down at the bottom of the hill, you will find the small 12th-century church of St Servatius (at 50°47'37.3"N 5°21'43.4"E) in Groot-Loon, which you could generously describe as a suburb of Borgloon, where Paul Devens has installeda work of audio art called "Proximity Effect", with ambient sounds played from loudspeakers which descend from the ceiling and then ascend again, creating a peculiar intimate effect which I think I have failed to capture here:
There are another seven works of public art in Borgloon, and if you had most of a day you could easily look at them all; it's not a big place. But we had decided to go only at lunchtime, and the rain was closing in. The installations will be there until June 2016.
Click to viewHere are A and F looking out at me through the lines:
And from the other side, you can see how the sculpture neatly frames the real church in the town:
In fact, "Reading Between The Lines" is just one of a number of public art installations around the town of Borgloon organised by the Z33 museum in the nearby town of Hasselt. As you wander through the nearby fields you will come acrossa peculiar twisted cylindrical wooden structure (at 50°47'41.4"N 5°21'06.1"E):
But from the right vantage point, the twists and turns resolve into the Dutch word "twijfelgrens", Border of Doubt - or is it Doubtful Border? The meaning conveyed by artist Fred Eerdekens is ambiguous.
And down at the bottom of the hill, you will find the small 12th-century church of St Servatius (at 50°47'37.3"N 5°21'43.4"E) in Groot-Loon, which you could generously describe as a suburb of Borgloon, where Paul Devens has installeda work of audio art called "Proximity Effect", with ambient sounds played from loudspeakers which descend from the ceiling and then ascend again, creating a peculiar intimate effect which I think I have failed to capture here:
There are another seven works of public art in Borgloon, and if you had most of a day you could easily look at them all; it's not a big place. But we had decided to go only at lunchtime, and the rain was closing in. The installations will be there until June 2016.