A Visit to Middlesbrough – Claes Oldenburg and Haroon Mirza

The Bottle of Notes sculpture by Claes Oldenburg  is in the centre of Middlesbrough by MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art). There have been plenty of photos taken of it before now, but these are mine!

We had a short visit to Middlesbrough at Easter and managed, amongst other things, to see this, the MIMA exhibitions, the Anish Kapoor sculpture at Riverside Park (see tomorrow’s post) and had a walk round Great Ayton.

Bottle of Notes

Bottle of Notes

Bottle of Notes

MIMA

One of the exhibitions we saw at MIMA was Untitled Song by Haroon Mirza. I can’t show photos other than this wall in the gallery, but I did record part of the audio in the exhibition. Here is 30 seconds of it.

Haroon Mirza

You may not find the sound particularly easy to listen to – it’s not exactly popular music – but there was more to it than this sample and it worked well with the space and the sculptures by James Clarkson, some of which had been modified by Mirza.