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| Since the advent of John Fox's spectaculars of ritual and procession in Yorkshire with the Welfare State International company 45 years ago, much of our most potent theatrical and installation art has taken place in outdoor landscapes, on rivers and hilltops, in forests and fields. The sculptor and designer Graeme Gilmour, who has been found dead aged 48, was at the heart of many such recent adventures. | Since the advent of John Fox's spectaculars of ritual and procession in Yorkshire with the Welfare State International company 45 years ago, much of our most potent theatrical and installation art has taken place in outdoor landscapes, on rivers and hilltops, in forests and fields. The sculptor and designer Graeme Gilmour, who has been found dead aged 48, was at the heart of many such recent adventures. |
| For more regular theatregoers, Gilmour will be remembered for his brilliant collaboration with the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch on Shockheaded Peter (1998), a "junk" opera and sardonic elegy for dead children based on Heinrich Hoffmann's cautionary tales. It was produced by Michael Morris's Cultural Industry, with jangling music by Martyn Jacques and the Tiger Lilies. Gilmour's contribution as a puppeteer, performer and co-designer of mobile cardboard furniture, trick costumes and an eerie stage environment of doors and shutters was central to the success of a show that originated at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and went on to win an Olivier award for best entertainment and a Critics' Circle gong for best design. | For more regular theatregoers, Gilmour will be remembered for his brilliant collaboration with the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch on Shockheaded Peter (1998), a "junk" opera and sardonic elegy for dead children based on Heinrich Hoffmann's cautionary tales. It was produced by Michael Morris's Cultural Industry, with jangling music by Martyn Jacques and the Tiger Lilies. Gilmour's contribution as a puppeteer, performer and co-designer of mobile cardboard furniture, trick costumes and an eerie stage environment of doors and shutters was central to the success of a show that originated at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and went on to win an Olivier award for best entertainment and a Critics' Circle gong for best design. |
| Although Gilmour stayed, on and off, with that show throughout a world tour that lasted several years, Shockheaded Peter still represented a domestication of his work. He belonged outdoors, with Scotland's largest free-standing permanent sculpture, Arria, a giant steel female figure with swooping arcs looming over the M80 in Cumbernauld, that he collaborated on with Andy Scott; or with the now decaying Meg the Horse (from Robert Burns's poem Tam o'Shanter) that he created as part of Scotland's Year of the Homecoming in 2009. | Although Gilmour stayed, on and off, with that show throughout a world tour that lasted several years, Shockheaded Peter still represented a domestication of his work. He belonged outdoors, with Scotland's largest free-standing permanent sculpture, Arria, a giant steel female figure with swooping arcs looming over the M80 in Cumbernauld, that he collaborated on with Andy Scott; or with the now decaying Meg the Horse (from Robert Burns's poem Tam o'Shanter) that he created as part of Scotland's Year of the Homecoming in 2009. |
| The son of a furniture shop manager, Ewing, and his wife, Molly, Gilmour grew up with his brothers in Ayr and Prestwick in the west of Scotland, dabbling in amateur dramatics before attending Prestwick academy and then, between 1982 and 1986, the Glasgow School of Art, where he studied sculpture. | The son of a furniture shop manager, Ewing, and his wife, Molly, Gilmour grew up with his brothers in Ayr and Prestwick in the west of Scotland, dabbling in amateur dramatics before attending Prestwick academy and then, between 1982 and 1986, the Glasgow School of Art, where he studied sculpture. |
| On graduating, he joined the Welfare State community of artists, building a huge effigy of Saint Mungo for a mammoth lantern parade in Glasgow's year as European capital of culture in 1990, as well as two great Margaret Thatcher floats that sailed poignantly down the Clyde to mark the transfer of the government's capital investment to foreign shipyards. For the capital of culture finale he provided two great expanding pink salmon rising in the night sky over Glasgow Green in a wild constellation of fiery stars and planets – fish out of water with a scintillating message of colour, noise and defiance. | On graduating, he joined the Welfare State community of artists, building a huge effigy of Saint Mungo for a mammoth lantern parade in Glasgow's year as European capital of culture in 1990, as well as two great Margaret Thatcher floats that sailed poignantly down the Clyde to mark the transfer of the government's capital investment to foreign shipyards. For the capital of culture finale he provided two great expanding pink salmon rising in the night sky over Glasgow Green in a wild constellation of fiery stars and planets – fish out of water with a scintillating message of colour, noise and defiance. |
| In the following decade, Gilmour was part of a loose collective of sculptors (including Andy Scott and Ewan Hunter), Acme Presentations, who created the annual Shine on Glasgow festivals, climaxing in the raucous, spectacular 1997 celebration of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. | In the following decade, Gilmour was part of a loose collective of sculptors (including Andy Scott and Ewan Hunter), Acme Presentations, who created the annual Shine on Glasgow festivals, climaxing in the raucous, spectacular 1997 celebration of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. |
| In 1998, he was a key member of the Improbable Theatre and World Famous collaboration, led by Crouch and Mike Roberts, that produced Sticky at the Stockton international riverside festival. This was a huge, weird outdoor installation including a 100ft tower made of sticky tape and a giant insect wrapped in Sellotape giving birth to a host of larval eggs. | |
| Gilmour's trademark became steel-framed structures encased in industrial shrink-wrap and illuminated with lights, fire or fireworks. If Welfare State were known as "engineers of the imagination" then he became a notable technician and head foreman. Much of his work was intentionally fleeting, evanescent, designed to explode or expire at the very moment of its greatest impact. | Gilmour's trademark became steel-framed structures encased in industrial shrink-wrap and illuminated with lights, fire or fireworks. If Welfare State were known as "engineers of the imagination" then he became a notable technician and head foreman. Much of his work was intentionally fleeting, evanescent, designed to explode or expire at the very moment of its greatest impact. |
| Although he was a fully signed-up, dedicated Scot – he wore kilts and loved mackerel fishing – Gilmour gravitated naturally towards the artistic community in Brighton, East Sussex, and made his home there 15 years ago. In 2004, he "did a Christo", covering Brighton Dome in shrink-wrap. And he designed three solo shows for his friend and fellow Brightonian, Tim Crouch, each one telling the back story of outsider characters in Shakespeare: I, Peaseblossom, I, Banquo and I, Malvolio. Crouch testifies to the deep creative input of Gilmour's designs, which combined vivid practical density with startling costume: a terrifying severed head for Banquo and a blood-boltered set that was destroyed at each performance; a pair of beautiful fairy wings for Peaseblossom made of clingfilm, coat-hanger wires and the skeleton of a rucksack; and soiled long- johns for Malvolio who appeared with a coronet of flies buzzing round his bald pate. | Although he was a fully signed-up, dedicated Scot – he wore kilts and loved mackerel fishing – Gilmour gravitated naturally towards the artistic community in Brighton, East Sussex, and made his home there 15 years ago. In 2004, he "did a Christo", covering Brighton Dome in shrink-wrap. And he designed three solo shows for his friend and fellow Brightonian, Tim Crouch, each one telling the back story of outsider characters in Shakespeare: I, Peaseblossom, I, Banquo and I, Malvolio. Crouch testifies to the deep creative input of Gilmour's designs, which combined vivid practical density with startling costume: a terrifying severed head for Banquo and a blood-boltered set that was destroyed at each performance; a pair of beautiful fairy wings for Peaseblossom made of clingfilm, coat-hanger wires and the skeleton of a rucksack; and soiled long- johns for Malvolio who appeared with a coronet of flies buzzing round his bald pate. |
| Gilmour also worked with such inventive theatre groups as Dot Comedy and Spymonkey, and devised a long-range programme of site-specific events in Northumberland over three years, including Out of Water (2008) in the Kielder Forest with Phil Supple. | Gilmour also worked with such inventive theatre groups as Dot Comedy and Spymonkey, and devised a long-range programme of site-specific events in Northumberland over three years, including Out of Water (2008) in the Kielder Forest with Phil Supple. |
| For the London 2012 festival, he was part of the Brighton-based Millimetre company that built (in a farmyard) the extraordinary one-bedroom boat hotel that is still moored on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank, as though abandoned by a receding tide, a cultural eyrie for writers and composers with peace for contemplation and great views of the Thames. | For the London 2012 festival, he was part of the Brighton-based Millimetre company that built (in a farmyard) the extraordinary one-bedroom boat hotel that is still moored on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank, as though abandoned by a receding tide, a cultural eyrie for writers and composers with peace for contemplation and great views of the Thames. |
| Although he had latterly turned to computer visualisation, Gilmour's real contribution lay in this continual redesign and enhancement of the landscape, and his work in another part of the woods, as it were, in Dover, led him to directing the choreography of five firework-bedecked boats for the festival A Song for Dover last year. | Although he had latterly turned to computer visualisation, Gilmour's real contribution lay in this continual redesign and enhancement of the landscape, and his work in another part of the woods, as it were, in Dover, led him to directing the choreography of five firework-bedecked boats for the festival A Song for Dover last year. |
| Gilmour is survived by his two brothers and his mother. | Gilmour is survived by his two brothers and his mother. |
| • Alexander Graeme Gilmour, sculptor and designer, born 29 September 1964; died 23 March 2013 | • Alexander Graeme Gilmour, sculptor and designer, born 29 September 1964; died 23 March 2013 |