Northumberlandia
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Northumberlandia (the "Goddess of the North") is a huge land sculpture in the shape of a reclining female nude, which is under construction (Template:As of) near Cramlington, Northumberland, northern England. Made of 1.5 million tonnes of earth, it will be 34 metres high and 400 metres long and will be set in a 29-hectare public park. It is thought that it will be the largest land sculpture in human form in the world. It is intended to be a major tourist attraction, hopefully bringing an additional 200,000 visitors a year to Northumberland, and is due to open for public access in 2013.
It has somewhat unkindly been nicknamed "Slag Alice" by some.
Development
The designer is landscape architect Charles Jencks, an American who lives in Scotland.
The sculpture is being built on the Blagdon Estate, owned by Viscount Ridley, whose brother Nicholas was a government minister, and whose son Matt is a journalist, writer (e.g. The Red Queen), and businessman.
The £2.5m cost will be borne by the Blagdon Estate and the Banks Group, who will carry out the construction work. The construction is part of the development of an adjacent open-cast coal mine at Shotton. At the end of most Northumberland open-cast operations the land is restored to agriculture, but on this occasion it was decided to use the excavated material to make a dramatic aesthetic statement.
