Celebrating Elisabeth Frink's 'Flying Figures'

This June marks the 60th anniversary of the unveiling of Elisabeth Frink's 'Flying Figures' on the Ulster Bank in Shaftesbury Square.

As local Belfast writer Wendy Erskine points out, public art has to work alongside everything else in the location in which it is placed, and over time it will blend into its environment. In this essay, Erskine is talking about one of Belfast’s most known and loved public landmarks, Elisabeth Frink’s ‘Flying Figures’ which were commissioned in 1963 by Lurgan-based architect Houston and Beaumont and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for the then-new Ulster Bank building in Shaftesbury Square. The hope was for them to represent the height of modern city life. Though over their sixty years in place they became a beloved part of Belfast life, initially the local public were not impressed, saying “they look unfinished” and “make a fine building a laughing stock” [1].

Elisabeth Frink was born in 1930 and had success at a very young age. Selling work to the Tate Gallery when she was 21 and still a student at Chelsea College of Art. Though primarily a sculptor she always started with drawing, using plaster to create a plan for the final sculpture, chosen because plaster is soft enough to be filed and shaped when dry. These models would then be cast in bronze or, in the case of the Belfast 'Flying Figures', aluminium.  

Nature was at the centre of Frink's practice. She had a lifelong passion for horses which she depicted often, examples of which you can see in the Ulster Museum. Birds were another repeated motif throughout the artist's career with Frink describing them as “vehicles for strong feeling of pain, tensions, aggression and predatoriness”. [2]The nature of Ireland and Celtic mythology also became an influence after travelling around Ireland with her first husband the French Irish architect Michel Jammet.

As her career progressed Frink became known as a member of a group referred to as the Geometry of Fear. The term was coined by art critic Herbert Read about British sculptors who had grown up during the Second World War.  The imagery in this group’s work is related to the anxiety present in post-war society. For Frink, her personal experience with the war was in her childhood in Suffolk where army and air force members were often seen. Then later when she was studying alongside returned service people who had missed their education because of the war. The dual sides of war often appeared in her work and she would depict ‘warriors’ and ‘fallen men’. This inspiration led her to being awarded a national prize for a 'memorial to the unknown soldier' when she was just 23.

It was with a series that combined birds of prey with shapes reminiscent of aircraft wings that the two core influences in her practice, the horrors of war and the natural world, began to merge in the late 1950s. This then developed into the winged figures she made in the early 1960s. The Shaftsbury Square sculptures are part of this body of work.  

Frink received multiple public commissions in her lifetime throughout Britain and Ireland. The year after the Shaftsbury Square work she was commissioned by P&B Gregory to create a crucifix for the new chapel in Rosetta, St Bernadette’s. A maquette (model for a sculpture) for a crucifix is now in the Ulster Museum collection.

The maquette in the collection, along with 30 other drawings, prints and sculpture were gifted to the Ulster Museum in 2019 from the Frink’s estate. The Ulster Museum was selected as one of the recipients for the large cultural gift because of her connection to Belfast and Ireland.

On a visit to the Ulster Museum's current Kelpra exhibition, Nigel Oxley, the printmaker who worked with Frink, talked about her studio and the way she worked. He said she always listened to Mozart. Many anecdotes about Frink talk about her warm personality and zest for life. Her obsession with the effects of war and of nature led her to be actively involved with Amnesty International and various animal charities. Those who knew her well said that when she entered the studio she became very different, more serious and isolated, cutting herself off from the world to focus on her work.

The prints that are part of the Kelpra exhibition were produced in collaboration with Nigel Oxley. Included are a selection of etchings from her illustrations for the Children of the Gods series in 1988 and Red Horse a 1986 screen print. The horse is a staff and public favourite. Nigel told us about the surface of the print, the thick ink relating to the texture of her sculptures, appearing like bronze. Everything Frink created related to her sculpture. Her drawings were the start of her ideas for sculptures, figuring out form and shape. Her prints were about the surface. Frink’s inspirations of nature and people were not drawn from life but from her subconscious.

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The gifting of the sculptures from the Ulster Bank building has allowed us to look closely at their texture and surface. The aluminium has actually been protected from extensive pollution damage by the 60 years of Belfast rain! Frink never specifically named the sculptures. This has led them to being assigned names by the Belfast public. 'Flying Figures' is what they have become officially known as, but most people affectionately refer to them as 'Draft and Overdraft'.

We are now in the process of researching and planning how they can be shown to the public again alongside sharing more from the Frink gifted collection. For an opportunity to see her work up close now, you can see Red Horse in Kelpra: Artists and Printmakers until September 2024.