Submarine

Dreams and Passions of Tom McKendrick

Artist and sculptor Tom McKendrick grew up in the shipbuilding town of Clydebank near Glasgow, Scotland. Submarine was the name of his multi-media exhibition in Glasgow, and in this documentary he explains his childhood obsession with a device that could `goe under water unto the bottome and come up again at your plaisure' (as it was described in 1578) and with its development into the deadly weapon of today. The submarine relies on invisibility; it operates by stealth. `These things are really ugly but that's part of their attraction for me. They're powerful and they're brutal and they're vulnerable at the same time.' Clydebank was almost completely destroyed by bombing in 1941, and McKendrick's artistic vision was shaped by a community scarred physically and emotionally. He left school at fifteen to start work in the world-famous John Brown's shipyard, becoming a `loftsman,' a trade now obsolete, but as the yard experienced its final death-throes, in common with Clydebank shipbuilding as a whole, McKendrick moved on to the Glasgow School of Art. He is now an artist of international importance, with paintings on display all over the world.

`Bring together an artist as articulate as Tom McKendrick and a film-maker as visually eloquent as Mark Littlewood, and you get an art film of exceptional quality - one which conveys the ideas and the imagery of the artist, and even the texture of his work. Submarine is an extraordinarily vivid exploration of McKendrick's obsession with one of the deadliest and darkest of man's inventions. While he claims that the submarine has no aesthetic qualities, he is clearly committed to demonstrating that is has. The whole subject is steeped in paradox. As he says, the submarine's method of stealthily stalking its prey may seem to be the epitome of cowardice and yet immense courage is required to endure the claustrophobic conditions inside a submarine being bombarded by depth charges. By the same token, the ugly carcases of the thousands of submarines which lie in the depths around these islands are the tombs of heroes. One of the most impressive sequences in the film begins with McKendrick in his native Clydebank, standing on the derelict stocks on which some of the greatest ships in the world were built. He recalls that on that seemingly insignificant row of planks, the Lusitania took shape. She was to be the first major victim of the submarine, going down with 1,000 passengers, and this film shows the U-boat commander's entry in his log book, recording how he could not fire another torpedo into the struggling throng of people in the water. What has this to do with art? McKendrick brings out the way that man's resourcefulness and creativity are matched by his infinite capacity for destruction, and the final image in the film is chilling in the extreme. The film draws its inspiration and much of its imagery from Tom McKendrick's Submarine exhibition which is touring Scotland, but the cross-cutting with actuality film is very effectively done - for example, the sequences in McKendrick's studio have a marvelously physical quality. Music and sound are used very imaginatively and the photography is of a quality that one has come to expect of Mark Littlewood. He has good reason to be proud of this film.' Scotsman, Edinburgh, 1990

`An artistic triumph ... gives the fleeting impression of other people's lives passing before your eyes ... full of atmosphere from the hidden depths' Glasgow Herald

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.