…it humanizes us
Yesterday I made a trip to London to make some recordings in the radio studios at Premier Radio. On my way I passed an old boarded up wine seller in the town where I live. This large shop unit has been boarded up since the recession first struck. I remember walking past on the day that the steel shutters were being fixed and feeling that it was a taste of things to come. Just lastweek, though, the shop was brought back to life by an art installation:
CLICK for full size
The installation depicts a number of the shops which used to occupy the space, together with a small theater on the site:
CLICK for image of theatre
This artwork serves no practical purpose, but it visibly lifts the spirits of those who walk past it. Boarded-up shop units are an all too common sight on every High Street. They evoke a sense of shared failure that somehow things are not going right. The local business community have flown in the face of that by using this otherwise dead space.
A short trip later I found myself walking over Vauxhall Bridge to Pimlico. As I always do, I stopped to admire the four colossal statues by Alfred Drury on the downstream side of the bridge. These magnificent bronze statues depict: fine arts, science, education and local government. Of course, the pedestrian only gets glimpses of them, and even then only by leaning out precariously. That is not the point, though. The four figures stand there, staring out impassively at the waters below.The architects who put them there wanted the bridge to be beautiful as well as functional – and I salute them for it.
Detail of ‘fine arts’ by Alfred Drury, 1907 CLICK for full size image
