Saint Mungo

Category: Public Art

'St.Mungo-on-the-Tron' (launched 23 October 2003)

The kinetic sculpture of Glasgow's patron-saint sits in the west-facing window of the ancient Tron Steeple. The sculpture by Eduard Bersudsky (an internationally acclaimed sculptor-mechanic, specialising in creating kinetic sculptures from wood and mechanical machinery) was adjusted to the clock to chime on the hour, every hour. In the evening, the sculpture is also lit by constantly changing coloured fibre-optic lights.

This piece was Bersudsky's team's first outdoor commission and is even more significant due to the fact that it is also the first town clock featuring a mechanical figure in Scotland.

Eduard Bersudsky is also famous for having created the Millennium Clock for the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and is well known in Glasgow, as he also has a nearby kinetic gallery/theatre; 'SHARMANKA' around the corner from the Tron Theatre, on Osborne Street.

Eduard was born in St Petersburg in 1939 and is a former electrician. His work as an artist began in Russia where he attended evening classes for drawing and sculpture and educated himself by reading art books at the libraries and visiting museums and exhibitions. Eduard started exhibiting his sculptures in exhibitions of non-conformist art – a movement of artists who wanted to avoid the control of official ideology in the former Soviet Union. In the beginning of perestroika he founded his company Sharmanka with his theatre director wife Tatyana Jakovskaya. They soon left Russia because of the increasing economic depression and the withdrawal of local authorities’ support for the arts and moved the company to Scotland.

Sharmanka performs a daily one-hour mechanical ballet involving about 30 of Eduard’s moving sculptures to audiences in its studio on Osborne Street, as well as touring nationally and internationally. It has gained a reputation as one of the Glasgow’s hidden treasures.