Palm Court at Alexandra Palace exhibition halls contains two fountains around which sit Egyptian sphinxes and obelisks. I stopped to admire them when I visited the excellent Fresh Art Fair a few weekends ago. As I was making my way out of the building I sat in this space to respond to some messages on my phone and happened to notice that an access plate near my feet had been mis-filled with tiles such that it looks like someone is rubbish at jigsaw puzzles.
Hmmm... it's almost correct. Considering there are many tile colours available out there, surely a better color match could have been found? At odds with this, they had bothered to cut a V shape into a pink tile outside of the plate in a space that surely should be the lighter cream color. Also, why are there random broken tiles? I looked sideways and noticed another cover place with horrible dark dirty tiles on it. Ugh!
I wondered if perhaps these plates belonged somewhere else within the forecourt, so I went to find some more...
Nope. They are clearly all 'created' by idiots in a hurry on a budget. Shoddy eh? There's actually a range of five or six cream through to beige colours used.
Regardless of the colour, it also fascinates me that the replacement tiles, in many cases, do not align with the originals, never mind the continuing the floor pattern.This final pair of examples are my favourites.
It must admit that I do like the random patterns created here. But as art. as design, as abstract patterns inspired by Mondrian.
I am reminded of the incorrectly-placed tiles that run around the top of the House of Barnabas on Soho Square and those hand-held games where you slide the squares to complete the picture.
