A Glasgow artist is preparing to ride Scotland’s first ‘Wall of Death’ in front of a live audience to raise funds for the rescue effort in Ukraine, the homeland of his late father.
Made entirely without nails, Stephen Skrynka started building the 16ft high circular structure himself then recruited a team of volunteers during lockdown who had been furloughed or left unemployed.
After two years and more than 5000 hours work it is nearing completion.
Wall of death circus attractions first appeared in the USA in the 1920s and involve motorcyclists defying gravity to circle their walls as spectators enjoy the ride from the relative safety of a viewing platform.
The artist taught himself how to perform the stunt for a National Theatre of Scotland show in 2010 which centred on the travelling community. He described the learning process as “long, slow and painful” but says the thrill of performing the stunt “got into his blood”.
The Revelator is now based in a warehouse on the Clyde where ship engines were built and hoisted through the roof by towering cranes.
“They came over to the UK from American in about 1928 and the performance hasn’t changed in 100 years,” said the artist, whose team of helpers included cabinet maker a fireman and an oncologist.
“I started this during the first week of lockdown at my home, it spilled out into the garden. “There was five months working completely on my own, night and day.
“Bradley who owns the building is from a travelling background and he allowed us to use this part of the building.
“It took a long time to learn. I was terrified,” he added.
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The seamless structure is built to be easily dismantled and will also be used as a venue for theatre shows, cinema screenings and other arts events.
The team are working on the final piece of the jigsaw to complete the viewing platform at the top of the structure which can accommodate around 250 people.
It won’t be ready in time for the artist’s fundraising stunt on April 3 but he hopes the public will get behind his Instagram livestream and donate a few pounds to the cause.
The day before, he will cook traditional Ukrainian dishes for 50 people at a bowling club in Glasgow’s west end.
He shared a photograph of his late father Volodymyr at the Russian embassy in London in the 1960s, holding up a protest banner that reads, “Russia stop destroying Ukranian libraries”.
“It’s history repeating itself” said the artist. “And he always foretold it. This was his biggest fear his entire life.
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“My father was from the west near Lviv. During the (second world) war that part of Ukraine was in complete chaos, from the Soviet army to the right and the Germans to the left and actually all they wanted to be was Ukrainian and they were pushed and pulled.
“My father’s older brother was conscripted to the Red Army and then my father was taken by the army and somehow escaped back to the village.
“Then the Germans came and he was captured by them and they were put in some sort of holding pen in Lviv and he escaped and walked back to the village.”
However he was warned by friends that the Red Army was rounding men up. His father had survived Stalin’s Holodomor, the artificial famine that claimed the lives of 3.9 million people - about 13 percent of the population.
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Unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, it was caused when the Russian dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
“There was no way that he wanted to be part of the Soviet system”, said the artist.
“So he went back to get captured by the Germans.
“They were taken to Berlin which was being bombed so they couldn’t stop and they somehow managed to escape and ended up in Belgium in a camp of displaced people.
“They knew if they were sent back they would be bumped off or sent to Siberia.
"There was a Canadian commandant there who had Ukrainian parents and they approached him and said, ‘do not send use back’.”
His father became part of the displaced Polish army and was sent to Aberdeenshire.
He later settled in London and despite having no formal qualifications became a civil engineer after working his way up from labouring on a building site. He retired in his early 60s then worked in a canteen cleaning pots till he was 83 when the firm told him it was costly to employ him due to new insurance guidelines. He died in 2011.
Mr Skrynka said: “He was so so proud to be given haven in the UK but was also so proud of being Ukrainian."
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