Four artists’ commissions in the City of London

26 Nov 2005 – 29 Jan 2006 Dusk until midnight This is the first winter of Light Up Queen Precedents for Light Up Queen Street Street, an annual programme of external include cities such as Turin and Lyon lighting, video and sound commissions where artists are commissioned to re-light for the City of London. For this year streets and buildings for the benefit of artists Susan Collins, Tim Head, Mark their residents and visitors in the darkest Lewis and David Ward have created a time of the year. This year’s Light Up series of new artworks inspired by the Queen Street programme follows the area and its street life and architecture. pilot project Forest by Maggie Ellenby last winter, a series of backlit shadow At the heart of this world financial centre works in empty offices around the area. Queen Street links the Guildhall, the oldest civic building in London, to the Thames. Light Up Queen Street is part of the The area’s contemporary identity overlays Corporation of London’s long-term project an accretion of prior histories and uses to enhance the street scene in the Queen from Roman times to the recent day. Street and King Street area. The Queen Street Pilot Project is the Corporation’s The artists selected for Light Up Queen flagship street scene enhancement Street re-imagine this urban setting, scheme which aims to create a safe taking mundane and often ignored and pedestrian friendly environment elements in the streetscape as their for the workers, residents and visitors inspiration for new artworks in light, to the area. sound and film in unexpected locations. These works subtly map the area, creating moments and journeys in light.

A LD

Locations ER Guildhall

M

A

N

B

U RY RY

1

GRESHAM S

TREET

I

R

O

N

M

O

NG

KING

E

R

L

N .

TRUMP S STR

EET T PRUDENT PASSAGE

REET

I R

2 O

N

M O

ST. PAULS NG

CHE E

APSIDE R

L

N 2 .

St. Mary-le-Bow CHEAPSIDE BANK

Churchyard

QU B

OW LAN OW POULTRY

E

EN

S E TREET

WATLI NG S

TREET

B

OW

LA TREET

N E N VICTORIA S QUEE 3

MANSION HSE. CANNON ST R

EET GR H COLLEGE EAT ST. TH OMA S AP

OSTLE

QU

G

A

R

D

E ILL

LI

OW

EN

CK HI CK

G

AT

S

TR

E HI E

LL St. Michael CANNON ST.

E

Paternoster Royal LL ET

COLLE GE STREET 4 COLLE GE STREET UPPER THAM ES STRE ET

1. Susan Collins 2. Mark Lewis 3. Tim Head 4. David Ward Underglow Rush Hour, Morning & Float Nocturne Evening, Poultry, EC2 Guildhall Yard entrance Albert Buildings’ St. Michael Paternoster (off Gresham Street) Prudent Passage façade on Queen Royal/College Street and along King Street (off King Street) Street (junction with and Queen Street and St. Mary-le-Bow Queen Victoria Street) Churchyard Susan Collins

Susan Collins Underglow Locations: Guildhall Yard entrance (off Gresham Street) and along King Street and Queen Street

Susan Collins works across a range of the real and the imagined, the tangible media, often in public and site-specific and the fictitious, which fascinates Collins. locations. For Light Up Queen Street she Susan Collins is known for her subtle has focused on the hidden world beneath interventions in public spaces. She our feet, illuminating the network of drains exhibits nationally and internationally and gullies which service the streets. using a range of media including online Light glows and leaks through the grilles, commissions for Tate and Film and gradually shifting through a spectra of Video Umbrella. Permanent commissions intense colours, giving the impression that include an award-winning collaboration these vents breathe and pulse with alien with the architect Sarah Wigglesworth life. Light is used to draw our imaginations on a Classroom of the Future and an into an underground world below street installation for the new University level, following the disappearing path of College London Hospital. the city’s waste. It is this edge between Susan Collins (left and front cover) (left and front Collins Susan © © Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Poultry, EC2 Locations: St.Mary-le-Bow Churchyard and Prudent Passage (off King Street)

Mark Lewis is an artist-filmmaker, and the spectators might reflect on our own often focuses in his short and silent films journeys through the urban street-grain. on the descriptive and pictorial qualities Mark Lewis is a Canadian artist based in of this medium. His film for Queen Street London who exhibits internationally and was shot in the local area on 35mm at whose films are in major public and private the time of year when the sun creates collections. He has forthcoming solo shows long shadows. Pedestrians and passers-by at FACT, Liverpool and at the British Film became unknowing actors within this Institute, London in 2006; this will be his short narration of an everyday event – first outdoor public art commission. the morning and evening rush hour. The slow, silent movement of the camera and the inverted camera frame present an unfamiliar image of the area, and watching the film from the street, we as Tim Head

Tim Head Float Location: Albert Buildings’ façade on Queen Street (junction with Queen Victoria Street)

Tim Head’s work explores the innate blocks of form and colour which emit qualities and forms of various media light, the pixels refer to the basic elements through which we observe and perceive of representation used by the computer our environment. For the last decade he and television screen. has concentrated on working with digital Tim Head has recently shown at Tate media and electronic space. In Float, square Britain and had a solo exhibition at pixels slowly rise and fall across the highly the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1992. ornate stucco façade of the building, their His work is held in major museum paths and colours randomly generated collections around the world. He has by a real-time computer program. Never exhibited nationally and internationally repeating the same scenario twice, this and his work, which includes digital abstract moving picture echoes the animation and photography, often movement of people and traffic and the uses light, projection and colour. exchange and flow of business, commerce and information in the City. As simple © Richard Davies © Richard Photo Photo © David Ward © David Malin Images Observatory/David image: Anglo-Australian © Pleiades

David Ward

David Ward Nocturne Location: St. Michael Paternoster Royal/College Street

David Ward has made a number of carvings of singing angels on the façade. permanent and temporary artworks in Still an important navigational aid, stars the public domain which relate to different are now hardly visible in the City, their times of day. For Nocturne – a word brightness dimmed by light pollution. describing certain forms of music and Nocturne has associations with a notional painting relating to evening or night – landscape predating the City and different he combines birdsong with an image passages of time: seasonal, temporal, of the night sky. He transposes sounds historical and stellar. of a summer woodland into the winter David Ward has exhibited nationally and evenings in Whittington Gardens; for the internationally and is also known for his adjacent St.Michael Paternoster Royal work relating to architecture, including Church a large-scale image of the Pleiades temporary installations at the Royal Festival star constellation is projected onto the Hall and Sir John Soane’s Museum. He was south wall. Known as Dick Whittington’s visual artist for the Siobhan Davies Dance church it is now home to The Mission to Company’s most recent work Bird Song, Seafarers, also called the Flying Angel, performed at Sadler’s Wells in 2005. which has inspired the illumination of Further information

Queen Street Pilot Project With thanks to: The Queen Street Pilot Project is the Bovis Lend Lease Corporation’s flagship street scene enhance- Cannon Street Business Centre ment scheme which aims to create a safe and pedestrian friendly environment for the Legal & General Investment workers, residents and visitors to the area. Management A number of streets and spaces in the Queen Mitsubishi Estates Company Street area have already been enhanced to The Mission to Seafarers at create a simple and uncluttered public realm St. Michael Paternoster Royal with a refined and tailored appearance. The Corporation believes that the creation of an Stanhope Plc attractive and user-friendly street scene is Structadene Ltd an important asset that adds to the value of the City as a place to live and work in. The Venerable Peter Delaney, Archdeacon of London Light Up Queen Street The Rector, the PCC and the The programme is commissioned by the staff at St. Mary-le-Bow Church Corporation of London, under the Queen Street Pilot Project, and curated by Modus Operandi Art Consultants with advice from lighting consultants, Sutton Vane Associates. [email protected] www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

Other attractions These include Guildhall Art Gallery, St.Paul’s Cathedral, Museum of London and the Barbican Centre.

Transport The Queen Street area is well served by public transport. The nearest tubes are Bank, Mansion House, St.Paul’s and Cannon Street.

Department of Planning & Transportation www.cityoflondon.gov.uk modus operandi art consultants