If you look around the back of the Hanover Square entrance to the Elizabeth line’s Bond Street station, you’ll spy a large work of public art hanging on the wall.
It’s a nine-metre long strip of crafted terrazzo and is the first large-scale public commission by London-based artist, Rhys Coren. The passage it sits on is new, having been created as part of the oversite development for the area after the buildings had been cleared to build the Elizabeth line station.
Behind the artwork is the ventilation shaft for the Elizabeth line platforms. Although the vertical shaft reaches to the top of the building, it’s empty, as the huge fans used to extract air run horizontally under the footpath next to the Medici Courtyard.
So hundreds of people walk on top of a giant ventilation fan without ever noticing.
Called ‘Everyone I’ve Ever Known’, we are told that it references Rhys’ longterm interest in music, popular culture, cartoon imagery, and the public realm. Personally, I am not seeing that, but I am seeing a rather nice work of abstract art with the muted colours and shapes being very appealing.
It’s also deliberately difficult to stand back and look at as the length of the artwork is at odds with the narrow passage it sits in. So all your views are at angles and off centre – unless you look on the artist’s website, where he has stitched some photos together.
It weighs 3 tonnes and needed a special crane to lift it over the buildings and into the corridor where it was lifted up onto a prebuilt frame, and you can find it behind the Hanover Square entrance to Bond Street station.
This article was published on ianVisits
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The post New public art behind the Elizabeth line’s Bond Street station appeared first on ianVisits.
