The Gatekeeper

Category: Contemporary Public Art

The Gatekeeper, unveiled in 2002 is the product of Dan Dubovitz and Matt Baker, collectively known as Heisenberg. Comprising of three parts a suspended sculpture (cast in bronze), a framed picture(illuminated at night) and a small crypt in the foundations underneath the photograph. The Gatekeeper is intended to represent the Gorbals as a place on the threshold of change between the demolition of the past and the reconstruction of the future. The crypt however, contains a darker meaning, filled from a bonfire held by Heisenberg, at which local residents burnt things which they wanted to leave behind from the old Gorbals in a kind of private ritual.
More recently the statue has been dubbed "the angel with the bleeding hand" after a crack in the bronze allowed rain water to seep through the angels hand turning a reddish brown in colour, listing the sculpture as a mysterious object on the internet.