Press Release 3 British Land’s Public Art At Regents Place Works by Michael Craig Martin Liam Gillick Antony Gormley Langland & Bell Sarah Morris Fiona Rae The British Land Company PLC has completed a Public Art programme as part of its new development at Regent’s Place, Euston Road, London, NW1. “Big Fan”, the 15m by 13 m lightbox by Michael Craig Martin, overlooking Triton Square, is his first major outdoor commission. Liam Gillick has created a lighting scheme at Triton Square Mall entitled “Reciprocal Passage Work” “Opening/Capture”, an S shaped bench in Portland Stone by Langlands & Bell is installed at Triton Square and “Reflection”, an intriguing double iron casting by Antony Gormley stands both inside and outside 350 Regents Place Painting is represented by the Sarah Morris’ “Interior Department South (Capital)” (350 Regents Place) and two untitled works by Fiona Rae (338 Euston Road) Of special historical interest is the white marble freize created by Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1876), depicting Nelson’s triumph at the battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797. This was originally to have been installed as part of the decoration of Marble Arch but has not been displayed since its creation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The Public Art Programme has been curated by Andrea Schlieker Notes for editors attached 10 Cornwall Terrace Regent’s Park London NW1 4QP T +44 (0)20 7486 4466 F +44 (0)20 7935 5552 W www.britishland.com Registered Office at business address Reg No 621920 England – Established 1856 Press Release 3 Notes for editors Copyright Andrea Schlieker ART AT REGENT’S PLACE The Battle of St. Vincent Freize circa 1826 Marble Triton Square The white marble frieze was created by Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1876) and is one of two recently rediscovered monumental relief carvings originally intended to form part, with others, of a monumental Triumphal Arch inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome and commissioned by George 1V. Intended presumably to trump Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe the project was never completed although a scaled down version became what we now know as Marble Arch. Of the sections that became surplus to requirements, some were used in the facades of Buckingham Palace and the National Gallery. The relief panel here depicts the surrender of the Spanish Admiral Don Francisco Xavier Winthuysen, defeated at the Battle of St Vincent in 14th February 1797 who weakly hands his sword to Nelson while supported by two sailors, watched by other sailors and British officers. Antony Gormley: Reflection, 2001 Cast iron 350 Regent’s Place Antony Gormley is one of Britain’s best known and most widely celebrated artists. Since the inauguration of his ‘Angel of the North’ in Gateshead in 1998, which instantly became a symbol for the regeneration and growth of the North East, he has established himself as a household name. Down the road in the piazza of The British Library is his ‘poetics circle’ sculpture, The Planets, comprising of eight pieces that are universally admired. His other publicly sited sculptures can be found in places as far afield as Birmingham and Tokyo, Kassel and north Norway, Derry and Umea . Gormley’s subject is the body and our sense of being in the world. Using his own body as the mould for sculptures in lead, concrete or cast iron, he articulates in physical posture an expression of a focussed inner state. Whether his bodyforms appear as a solitary figure or in configurations of up to a hundred, their emotional intensity and contemplative nature is always anchored in their earthbound, concentrated physical form. Cast in iron from the artist’s own body, ‘Reflection’ has the patina of lived skin. The doubled figures, separated by a sheet of glass, deliberately play with perception and 10 Cornwall Terrace Regent’s Park London NW1 4QP T +44 (0)20 7486 4466 F +44 (0)20 7935 5552 W www.britishland.com Registered Office at business address Reg No 621920 England – Established 1856 Press Release 3 trick our senses: we are uncertain whether we witness a mirror-image or an encounter with a Doppelgaenger. Whilst cars and people rush past on the busy Euston Road, ‘Reflection’ offers a quiet moment of peace and calm thought of self. It is a poignant expression of Gormley’s quest for identity in an age of increasing alienation. Michael Craig-Martin: Big Fan, 2003 Flexible PVC, fluorescent lights Triton Square Michael Craig-Martin is an internationally acclaimed artist whose brightly chromatic wall-paintings have become his hallmark over the last decade. Starting out as a conceptual sculptor in the late 1960s, Craig-Martin developed his first wall-drawings in 1978 by tracing the outlines of ordinary objects with black tape directly on to gallery walls. Since the early 1990s he has infused his objects and their background with vivid yet artificial colours. His work has always been an inquiry into the nature of looking and of representation. Filing-cabinet, ladder, lamp or chair, all familiar objects of home and office, are either mysteriously inflated or shrunk in size and float as perspectival drawings on brilliantly coloured, glowing backgrounds like icons of the modern world. Each object in turn is imbued with a chromatic and thereby almost spectral intensity, lending them a surreal, jewel-like quality. Orange, lime-green, pink and yellow provide a vibrant, buzzing score which makes Craig-Martin’s contemporary still-lives so seductively mesmerizing and emotionally charged. Craig-Martin’s temporary museum exhibitions as well as his permanent public commissions are always sensitive to the specifics of given architecture. ‘Big Fan’, too, is site-specific. Developed especially for the south-facing wall of Triton Square, its composition closely follows the structure of the building. The electric fan is another ubiquitous functional object of Craig-Martin’s carefully selected repertoire, evocative of cooling breezes and movement, and, with its radiating circles, even of the setting sun, the colour spectrum of which ‘Big Fan’ emulates in a typically deadpan way. This is Craig Martin’s first outdoor work. With special thanks to Holmes Wood Partnership 10 Cornwall Terrace Regent’s Park London NW1 4QP T +44 (0)20 7486 4466 F +44 (0)20 7935 5552 W www.britishland.com Registered Office at business address Reg No 621920 England – Established 1856 Press Release 3 Langlands & Bell: Opening/Capture, 2003 Portland Stone Triton Square Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell have collaborated on their sculptures, reliefs and public commissions since 1978. Their central artistic starting point is the language of (especially modernist) architecture and design. Framed and wall-mounted architectural models offer insights into the geometries of a diverse spectrum of existing buildings from corporate headquarters to famous places of worship. By revealing their inner workings, Langlands and Bell suggest notions of power and control, as well as questions of identity inherent in these structures. Formally, the artists often use the diptych, a device particularly appropriate to comparison and contrast of related elements. Furniture, especially tables, chairs and benches, is another leitmotif of their work. Initially, their chairs and tables incorporated glass vitrines, showcases for their architectural models, or were even joined into a single hybrid structure. Whilst these early versions were pure sculpture rather than functional objects, the artists’ more recent preoccupation with furniture, especially in public commissions, positively invites use and thoughtful participation. With Opening/Capture, which owes its proportion and geometry to the layout of Triton Square, they have created another supremely elegant, apparently simple yet highly complex form. As in their architectural diptychs we again encounter a dualistic or bi- polar form: the large double-spiral seating sculpture is in fact a combination of two distinct but seamlessly connected halves of a giant letter ‘S’ – one being introverse, offering enclosure, comfort, communication, the other extroverse, offering outlook and exposure. By the barely perceptible shift of the backrest from outside to inside at the central point of the ‘S’, Langlands and Bell achieve two opposingly different psychological spaces. Openin/ Capture is not only a functional stone bench but a sculpture inviting contemplation. This is their first major permanent public commission in the UK With special thanks to CWO (Cathedral Works Organisation) Sarah Morris: Interior Department South (Capital), 2001 Household gloss paint on canvas 350 Regent’s Place The subject of Sarah Morris’s paintings is life in the contemporary Western metropolis. Since 1997 her focus has been on the ubiquitous modernist highrise of so many city centres. Painted in bold glossy colours, each canvas is divided into a hard-edge geometric grid, a distillation of the buildings’ outline and structure. No sky or pavement, 10 Cornwall Terrace Regent’s Park London NW1 4QP T +44 (0)20 7486 4466 F +44 (0)20 7935 5552 W www.britishland.com Registered Office at business address Reg No 621920 England – Established 1856 Press Release 3 no background or foreground further defines the image or anchors it in a recognizable situation. What we are given are fragments of familiar facades, each at a different vertiginous angle or in disorientating perspective. Hovering between a stylized depiction of our built environment and an abstract ornamental pattern, Morris’s paintings pulsate with cool rhythm. The paintings are grouped in series, each refering to architecture in a different American city: ranging from New York’s Time Square district (‘Midtown’), to the lurid hotel-scape of Las Vegas (‘Las Vegas’), and, most recently, the government buildings in Washington D.C. (‘Capital’). Together, they begin to depict a visual archive of our urban world. Each painting identifies its location by name: ‘Seagram’, ‘Paine Webber’, ‘Penn Plaza’ from the Midtown series; or ‘The Luxor’, ‘The Mirage’ from the Las Vegas series.