Temple tube station’s grey concrete roof terrace has been given a kaleidoscopic makeover by London-based artist Lakwena Maciver. Titled ‘Back in the Air: A Meditation on Higher Ground,’ Maciver’s rooftop art installation features a series of interlocking geometric patterns inspired by her Ugandan heritage …
You can read more about the work here along with some great aerial images. Highly recommended since it also includes fascinating time lapse footage of the work’s construction.
You may wonder why Temple Station, built in 1870, has this unusual flat roof. Well, when the station building was proposed, the Duke of Norfolk, who owned land to the north, didn’t want a tall structure obstructing his view. As a result of his objection, the flat roof meant he could still gaze happily over the Thames and wander across the roof if that took his fancy. Another constraint was demanded by the barristers in the nearby Inns of Court. Train drivers were not allowed to blow their whistles in their proximity so members would not be distracted from their briefs (nor, presumably, have their slumbers interrupted).
If you like Italian food and produce Eataly, on Bishopsgate beside Liverpool Street Station, is the place for you. Great restaurants with scrumptious food and mini-shops selling all kinds of produce. There’s a great wine shop as well. I love this sparkling arcade …
I like the ‘splashy’ roof over the pavement at 22 Bishopsgate (EC2N 4AJ) …
Fun pink ‘stuff’ at St Pancreas …
Crazy shop window nearby …
Street art near Rivington Street …
The ‘Hanging Gardens of the Barbican’ are gradually changing colour …
Sadly, the last hollyhock of the year …
However, there is cause for optimism. A little green leaf emerging from the Amaryllis!
Last Saturday I went on a guided tour of Highgate Cemetery and took this image of our excellent guide James in his natural green habitat …
The Cemetery is well worth visiting and the guided tours great value for money (or you can go self-guided if you prefer). Details can be found here on their website. You must book a time slot in advance.
And finally, can you spot the Tower 42 orange pumpkin head?
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As regular readers of this blog will know, I love the Museum of London and it’s one of my go-to places if I feel I need a bit of cheering up (and, almost inevitably, I learn something new).
For example, it had completely escaped my notice that the Roman Emperor Claudius used elephants during his invasion of Britain in AD 43. Not far inside the entrance to the Museum is this totally bonkers mural illustrating their use in battle. The beasts look suitably angry at being dragged half way around the world just to stamp on a few ancient Britons …
There’s Claudius on the right on a white horse, possibly declaring ‘missio peracta’ (which Google assures me is ‘mission accomplished’ in Latin). Around the same time a young woman of the Iceni tribe called Boudica was aged about 30.
As Queen Boudica, she is now famous for her 60/61 AD uprising against the Romans. For resisting the appropriation of her property and that of her tribe, the local Roman procurator had her flogged and her daughters raped. Building on the fury of other tribes, she raised an army which went on to capture present day Colchester (Camulodunum) routing the Roman division there in the process. She then headed for Londinium.
Early London was a sprawling settlement, unwalled and defenceless since the Governor, Gaius Seutonius Paulinus, believing his troops to be disastrously outnumbered, made a tactical retreat (i.e. fled). On arriving, Boudica’s army burnt the place to the ground and slaughtered everyone they could find. These skulls on display in the Museum may be evidence of that massacre …
Primarily belonging to young adult men, a large number were found in the ancient Walbrook stream (although it must be said that there are alternative theories as to their origin).
The settlement of Verulamium – today’s St Albans – was next to feel the wrath of Boudica’s revenge as her, seemingly unstoppable, army sacked and burnt it en route to their inevitable confrontation with the now significantly strengthened Governor’s army.
The battle went badly and, rather than face the inevitable humiliation of capture, she is said to have poisoned herself and was buried by her people at a secret location. Some claim she’s buried beneath platform 10 of King’s Cross Station – maybe that’s why there’s a Boadicea Street nearby (N1 0UA)!
‘How’s my driving?’ Here she is with her daughters, driving her chariot, remarkably without the use of reins …
Boudica at Westminster : picture by Paul Walter/Wikipedia
Evidence of Boudica’s destruction of London lives on in a layer of burnt earth and debris known as the Red Layer that is occasionally uncovered during modern developments.
Not an elephant but the skull of a long extinct animal called an Auroch …
Up until the early 17th century you could still have encountered a live one (living in Poland). The one in the museum lived in Essex and was found in Ilford where it would have been part of a large herd. Incidentally, Aurochs live on today in the coats of arms of Romania and Moldova.
There’s a great temporary exhibition at the Museum illustrating the work of contemporary London makers.
I really like this stained glass work entitled Gorilla (2017) by Piotr Frac …
And what about this piece by James Shaw entitled Plastic Baroque …
Pregnant and casually dressed, she poses with a ciggie in one hand and the dogs’ leash in another.
Now some brave women from a different era, the Suffragettes. This is the banner of the West Ham branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union 1909-1910 …
Suffragette prisoners often removed loaves of bread from Holloway Prison as a souvenir of their incarceration. Now well over 100 years old, this loaf was carefully preserved and gifted to the Museum in 1950 …
Read more about the campaign for Votes for Women and those who fought it here.
What a great poster …
If you’d like to cast you mind back to the heady, optimistic days of the 2012 London Olympics, the Olympic cauldron is on display again …
When you are appropriately Sanitised, the Victorian Walk is always a nice way to complete a visit …
By the way, if you are passing through Temple Station and have a bit of time to spare, get off and make your way to the station roof where you will find this fabulous installation by London-based artist Lakwena Maciver. It’s entitled ‘Back in the Air: A Meditation on Higher Ground’. This is only a small part of it …
I shall have more images for you next week.
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I thought it would be interesting to revisit the Sculpture in the City project again having written about it a few weeks ago. There are also some sculptures that I have come across over the years that are not quite what they seem so I have included them as well.
First up from the project is Rough Neck Business by Mike Ballard …
100 Bishopsgate, EC2M 1GT.
The work is made up of hoardings sourced from several sites across London which have seen great changes over recent years and have been surrounded by hoardings for quite some time. Ballard is interested in taking this material, that normally represents a threshold of ownership and protection of property, and transforming it from sheet form into a 3d structure of its own, to be admired for its un-painterly qualities and the ‘witness marks’ of the time it stood on the street.
This is Murmurs of the Deep by Laura Arminda Kingsley …
Installed on the escalators of theLeadenhall Building, EC3V 4AB.
The notes tell us that ‘here she creates a pictorial world in which our communion with the cosmos and nature is unmediated by cultural valuations or static ideas of identity. To accomplish this, Kingsley looks at the world through the lens of deep time, giving equal importance to; the microscopic and the macroscopic; folklore and science; and the archaic and the new, to offer the viewer a non-hierarchical perspective in which to reconsider their place in the world’.
Tatiana Wolska creates her sculptures using recycled plastic bottles. By cutting, perforating and thermo-welding them, she achieves sprawling, modular biomorphic forms …
‘Untitled’ : Leadenhall Market, EC3V 1LT.
‘By being light-weight these arresting forms can be placed within the environment in ways defying the laws of gravity. They can evoke floating islands of plastic waste or hold a strong poetic charge, appearing to be mysteriously suspended from the buildings or trees as if infecting the environment.’
The RedHead Sunset Stack captures a bit of the awe that seeing a beautiful sunset inspires in Almuth Tebbenhoff – reduced to the form of a large toy-tower …
Mitre Square, EC3A 5DH
‘At the centre the artist put a ragged and unstable human experience in pink and orange which is sandwiched between the steady blue earth and the red sun cubes. The earth and sun may be the only constants we have and even here we are at the mercy of incomprehensible forces.’
This work is my favourite and I make no excuses for showing it again …
The nearby notes tell us that the sculptor Jun T. Lai ‘created Bloom Paradiseto symbolize hope and love. The artist’s intention was to bring greater positivity into the pandemic stricken world and release healing energy. The bright and colorful flowers call to an imaginative world, leading the visitor into a fantasy wonderland. Through this work, the artist hopes to bring positive energy and joy, a gift of life, to everyone’.
I think she has succeeded brilliantly. What a lovely vision to encounter as you leave Fenchurch Street Station on your way to work.
By way of further light relief, there are benches around the city with ‘memorial’ plaques devised by Oliver Bragg. This one made me laugh …
‘This project focuses on the everyman, the natural environment and memories to place and memory itself. A series of engraved brass bench plaques have been installed to existing benches around the City of London. The plaques have been created to mimic the plaques that often adorn benches to memorialise or pay homage to a specific person. These, however, are fabricated: in loving memory of a ‘made up’ person or place or abstract idea’.
I thought that, since we are on the subject of public sculpture, I’d take this opportunity to share with you a few examples of works that perform another function apart from the purely aesthetic.
This is Angel’s Wings on Paternoster Square by Thomas Heatherwick. The sculpture is actually a ventilator for an underground electrical substation …
The makers of the vents, the Heatherwick Studio, say that ‘the aesthetic design is derived from experiments with folded paper, scaled up to 11m in height; the vents retain the proportions of the A4-size paper used in these experiments. The Vents are fabricated from 63 identical, 8mm thick, stainless steel isosceles triangles welded together and finished by glass bead blasting’.
Paternoster Square also hosts this elegant column that has a striking resemblance to The Monument commemorating the Great Fire …
In fact it is based on Inigo Jones’ corinthian columns for St Paul’s West Portico, destroyed in favour of Wren’s design we see today. Look closely and you’ll spot grates under the base, a ventilation system for the car park underneath your feet.
The flaming urn at the top refers not only the 1666 fire but also the Blitz that destroyed most of the surrounding area …
I took this picture to illustrate its position relative to St Paul’s, although the weather was not ideal for photography …
And finally, another ventilation shaft. James Henry Greathead was a South African engineer (note the hat) who invented what was to become known as the Greathead Shield. He came to be here on Cornhill because a new shaft was needed for Bank Underground Station and it was decided that he should be honoured on the plinth covering it …
Designed by James Butler (1994) – Cornhill EC3V 3NR.
The Shield enabled the London Underground to be constructed at greater depths through the London clay. The miners doing the tunneling, using pneumatic spades and hand shovels, would create a cavity in the earth where the Shield would be inserted to hold back the walls whilst the miners installed cast-iron segments to create a ring. The process would be repeated until a tunnel had formed in the shape of a ‘tube’, which is where we get the nickname for the network today. A plaque on the side of the plinth shows the men at work …
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