Art In The Park Guide

27 Pages·2014·2.65 MB·English

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Art
in the
PArk
A FIELD GUIDE
A fielD GUiDe to Art in the PArk 2 3 USinG thiS GUiDe
Queen Elizabeth Olympic This book is a field guide to the 26 permanent
artworks in the Park. There’s a map at the back and
Park was the first Olympic
each artwork has a number to help you locate them.
Going to find the artworks is just as important as all
Park to integrate artworks
the reading and looking you can do here.
into the landscape right from
These artworks have been made to be experienced
the start. We worked with in the landscape – up close and from afar. Touch
them, sit inside them, run across them, walk beneath
established and emerging
them. Gaze up, make games, take photographs, put
artists, international and local, yourself in their shadow.
to create an ambitious, diverse
art programme that reflects the
Park’s identity as a place for
people from around the world
and around the corner.
Some of these artworks are large and striking,
while others are smaller and harder to find. All
of them were created specifically for this Park by
contemporary artists who worked closely with
the architects, designers and construction teams
to develop and install their works.
Their inspirations are varied: the undulating
landscape, buried histories, community memories,
song titles, flowing water, energy, ideas of shelter
and discovery. Yet all of them are rooted here, each
of them sparking new conversations with their
immediate environment and this richly textured
part of east London.
“The trees mark time, the rings
trace landscapes and lives that
HISTory TrEES 2 3
have gone before.”
Ackroyd and Harvey Ackroyd and Harvey
British artists Ackroyd and Harvey created a series of living
artworks to mark the main entrances of the Park. Ten specimen trees,
chosen to reflect the biodiversity of the Park, each support a large
bespoke metal ring within their crown. The rings, engineered from
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bronze or stainless steel, are six metres in diameter and individually r
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engraved on the interior face with text capturing an archive of history e
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from each location. o t
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The ring on the English oak nearest the nt
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Aquatics Centre is inscribed with local at
residents’ recollections of the area. ns
To mark the opening of the London 2012 atio
Olympic and Paralympic Games the c
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shadow cast from the ring aligns each year al l
with a bronze ellipse laid into the ground. on
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For the full inscriptions of each of the rings d
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visit ackroydandharvey.com. e
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History Trees was supported by Mapping an
Your Manor, a project by artist Lucy e,
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Harrison, who worked with local people to nt
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record shared stories and memories. These s C
personal accounts informed the words on atic
the rings – a way to remember the stories u
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of the Park and its surroundings. A
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To download recordings from the project
visit mappingyourmanor.com.
Sawn Cattle Bone / Manufacture Of Buttons / Buried
Olympic Running Track / Two Paleolithic Hand Axes /
World War Two Memorials / Roman Burial Vault / Coins
Caesar To Constantine / East London Waterworks /
Temple Mills Stream / Yellow-Faced Bee / Songthrush
And Starlings / Japanese Knotweed
Extract from one of the engraved rings
“There’s a tradition of sculpture
doing a job. I tend to find a job
STELES 4 5
that I haven’t been asked to do
Keith Wilson and then I do it.”
Keith Wilson
Thirty-five striking and colourful posts line the Waterworks River,
bringing a distinctive identity to one of the main waterways in the
Park. Both sculptural and functional, like a chain of minimalist pop
monoliths, they evoke nautical waymarkers and have been made from
the same durable material as navigational water buoys. The Steles are
also practically useful as mooring posts, referencing the ongoing and
historical activity of boats and barges in this area.
The sleeves of the Steles are sprayed
with a tough polyelastomer coating, a kind
of plastic, that hardens as it dries. Wilson
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has experimented with covering a range v
of everyday objects in this material, s Ri
including a bright orange armchair that rk
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can be seen at the View Tube. To install w
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the Steles, a bespoke clamp was made that ate
dropped each sleeve into place from a W

floating pontoon.
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You can watch a video of the making of
Steles at keithwilsonstudio.com.
Step down to the
pontoons to see
Wilson’s diagram of Steles reveals the careful planning of the sequence of colours the Steles up close
WILD SWIMMEr 6 7
Jo Shapcott
This poem by Jo Shapcott imagines the Park from water level. “Dive in”,
she writes, encouraging you to “swim” through the poem and the past,
as you look out over the Park’s canals and rivers. Shapcott uses the
metaphor of water to explore the fluid and changing history of this part of
east London, from Alfred the Great to the Industrial Revolution. The poem
finishes by emerging into the Aquatics Centre designed by Zaha Hadid,
in a contemporary celebration of architecture, energy and achievement. d
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“Swim your heart out,” Shapcott writes, “for you are all gold”. R
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There are over eight kilometres of ar
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waterways in and around the Park, which r
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have been important to civilisation for e
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centuries. From the time of the Vikings right e
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up to the present day, the waterways have ct
connected inland communities with London ru
and the bustling Thames. These histories, n st
accumulating like silt over time, are the de
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inspiration for Shapcott’s poem. o
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This image (left) by artist Neville Gabie is d
taken in the Aquatics Centre where Shapcott’s ve
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poem ends. It was part of his project Twelve gr
Seventy, developed during his residency on En
the Park. The swimmer is one of the Park’s
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former bus drivers, who was the first person
to swim in this pool in 2011.
See page 22 for more about Gabie’s work as
the Park’s artist-in-residence.
... Here, the River Lea became a man-made mesh
of streams and channels to drain the marsh,
a maze for lightermen, of channels through
old waste, today’s liquid green corridors. Bow Back Rivers
Count off rivers as you swim: Bow Creek, the Waterworks, beside Marshgate
Lane in 2005,
the Channelsea, the City Mill, Hennikers Ditch ...
south of the
From ‘Wild Swimmer’ Stadium
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CArPENTEr ’S CUrVE A B BrICK FIELDS
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Clare Woods Clare Woods
Brick Fields and Carpenter’s Inspired by her time living
Curve by British artist Clare in and around east London,
Woods are large-scale artworks Woods based her paintings
that wrap around the facades on imagery of the waterways
of two utility buildings. Woods and an imagined future of
first created the artworks as vast the landscape. She chose to
paintings. These were transferred make the mural from ceramic
onto over 88,000 ceramic tiles tiles in reference to the area’s
using digital printing and water manufacturing history as the site
jet cutting techniques, making it of the former Bow tile factory.
the most complex tile mural in
the world. Clare Woods at work on her large-scale
painting before it was transferred to
the tiles
Simpson punched
the holes closely
oPEN FoLDS 10 11
together to create
undulating lines
DJ Simpson similar to those
found on maps
Open Folds is a large-scale artwork in two parts that wraps around
two utility buildings. One artwork has been created from dark
anodised aluminium to increase its resistance to weather, while
the other has a natural anodised silver finish. Punched-out holes form
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patterned lines that run horizontally across the artwork, representing o
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an abstract interpretation of a landscape. r’s
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Simpson’s art practice focuses on d C
linemaking. In creating Open Folds, he an
experimented with different ways of ad
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making lines before deciding to use a R
series of dots to create lines that still et
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looked hand drawn. fic
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Throughout the manufacturing process, M
Simpson wanted the artwork to retain on
this feeling of being handmade, and als
worked closely with the people who made ur
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it to explore different ways of punching e
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“The combined effect of the hole d Cl
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and the uneven deformation hi
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from the punched dimple gives B
the line a random quality. The 5
metal starts to look more fluid
and pliable, like an unpicked line
of stitching in cloth.”
DJ Simpson
One of Simpson’s original drawings
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Beneath the railway that leads 6 Running the length of one of
into Stratford, following the the Stadium island bridges, Fast,
Waterworks River, a series of Faster, Fastest is an interactive
motion-activated LED illuminations artwork that encourages people
light up the underpass, in a fluid, to compete against the lightning
rippling installation. This artwork speeds of their Olympic and
by Jason Bruges Studio illustrates Paralympic heroes. A sequence
the speeds of athletes and patterns of lights races across the bridge
made by their movements in and up a towering beacon that
the water. As you walk through, marks your speed as you chase
the lights mimic the shadows of the winning times. Press the button to start, then time
swimmers overhead, immersing Swimmers from the London 2012 Games your run against the lights that race
you in an underwater atmosphere. were the inspiration for Streamline Fast, Faster, Fastest will be up the beacon
activated in 2015.
Joan Littlewood “Everyone an artist,
campaigning to everyone a scientist.”
THE FUN PALACE 14 15
save Theatre Royal
Joan Littlewood
in Stratford from
Caroline Bird demolition in
the 70s
Poet Caroline Bird wrote this poem about the life and work of Joan
Littlewood who, among other things, was the life-force behind the
Theatre Royal in Stratford, which is still a landmark cultural venue now
known as Theatre Royal Stratford East. In the 1960s, Joan conceived
the Fun Palace with architect Cedric Price to be built on the site of the
Park; a ground-breaking arts and education centre that would welcome bit
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everybody. Although never built, Joan’s work on the Fun Palace and al
her infectious personality remain an inspiration to many. Mitt
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It is a love story. Joan and her theatre workshop. e
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They found a crumbling old slum in E15. They slept of t
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illegally in the eaves like ghosts with unfinished business. ut
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She created Oh What A Lovely War. She shovelled rubble s
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from Angel Lane. She said, ‘Let the waters close over me.’ u
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She was an outsider. She grafted. She changed the world ... ru
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From ‘The Fun Palace’ e
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October 2014 marks 100 years since on
Littlewood was born. A nationwide ed
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celebration of the Fun Palace headed by a
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writer and theatre maker Stella Duffy ng
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sees hundreds of organisations and artists
across the UK celebrate Littlewood’s 7
quest for engagement through a wealth of
different projects. Many of the current and
future arts and culture programmes on the
Park will keep this ethos of the Fun Palace
at their core, in the place where Littlewood
had originally envisioned it.
For more information, visit
funpalaces.co.uk and thelegacylist.org.uk.
FANTASTIC FACToLoGy 16 17
Klassnik Corporation,
Riitta Ikonen, We Made That
All over the Park, tucked away on silver plaques set into benches,
amazing facts and local recollections tell an alternative story of
the Park and provide an opportunity to wonder and learn. Topics
as diverse as astrology and zoology sit alongside more personal
memories and thoughtful moments. The project was a collaboration
between London-based architecture and design studio We Made That,
artist Riitta Ikonen, and the Klassnik Corporation, an interdisciplinary k
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design practice. Pa
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Over 2,000 facts were submitted by both ro
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local residents and famous people, such s
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as the late astronomer Patrick Moore and o
mathematician Johnny Ball. These weird cati
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and wonderful fragments of knowledge are 0 l
an unusual twist on the traditional park 5
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bench plaque. a
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The design team ran a series of events and
participatory workshops to inspire and
collect facts, asking everyone from school
children to senior groups.
Seek out more
See also Fantasticology on page 47 by than 50 facts
Klassnik Corporation, Riitta Ikonen and hidden around
We Made That. the Park