'One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen' - Sir Tony Robinson talks about Whitby Abbey giant artwork
TV presenter and broadcaster Sir Tony Robinson was at Whitby Abbey today to unveil a huge art installation, the size of four Olympic swimming pools, as part of the National Lottery’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
The 5,400 square metre ‘Heritage Tree’ land art enveloping the English Heritage site celebrates the extraordinary achievements of seven Heritage ‘Game Changers’.
These include Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of The Eden Project and physicist Teresa Anderson MBE, Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement.
The installation is created by land artist, David Popa, who used Whitby Abbey’s vast landscape and natural pigments painted on the ground to show the Game Changer’s hands holding the roots of a tree.
We caught up with Sir Tony to see what he thought of the artwork – and his love for the Whitby area.
“I’ve been a long time supporter of the National Lottery so I was only too pleased to front this,” he said.
"I had no idea what the artwork would look like, it was a real act of faith, but it’s one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen!
"The lottery spends £30m a week on heritage projects and I’m only too happy when they call on me to say there’s something we really ought to shout about because I consider what they do is really important.
"As an Anglo Saxon nerd, it’s all about inclusivity and in the 7th Century when the abbey was built, you think of monks, monasteries and blokes in long dresses working, that’s the archetypal image, but it was a woman, St Hild, who ran the abbey and it was for men and women.
"She was a real power broker and it struck me that if there was a heaven, she would be looking down smilingly benignly, using only pigments as the monks used to when illuminating their monasteries.
"It’s absolutely magical and what’s so great about the art installation is the way that includes the abbey itself into the artwork.
"The installation isn’t just in the grounds, it IS the grounds and the abbey itself – it’s just brilliant.
"There’s a very old fashioned part of me thinking ‘why can’t it stay for longer?’
"It’s so massive and dominating, but so ephemeral.”
He said it was fascinating to envisage how the artwork would fit in the with the landscape, with the huge installation using biodegradeable materials, resulting in a blend of medieval pigmentation and 21st Century technology in order to see it, via drone photographs.
Tony is no stranger to these parts, having filmed an episode of his Coast to Coast series, visiting Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay and RAF Fylingdales – he said it was “a privilege” watching exercises taking place there on site and “how our defence operates”.
"As a southerner, the first thing that strikes you is quite how big Yorkshire is!” he said.
"You think that you come up to York, turn right and you’re at the sea, but it’s the antithesis of that."
Tony is well known for playing the character Baldrick in the Blackadder comedy series.
So what would the loveable sidekick have made of a site like Whitby Abbey?
"On a day like today (in the wind and rain) - ‘it’s nice having a summer holiday’.”