Sculpture In The City / Modernism of Holland Park
Hello! I am writing this from a train, because trains are where I feel most able to write. I often catch a train in order to write, which is financially ruinous in the medium term. But at least I’m not inspired by the rhythm of the hovercraft.
The City, The City
I followed an art trail in the City of London over the weekend. It was called Sculpture in the City and was sponsored by: a multinational insurance company; a privately held financial, software, data, and media company; an Anglo-Bermudan insurance provider; a Chinese packaging products, travel bags, and property development company; a Hong Kong-based, privately-owned real estate and investment company; three real estate investment and management businesses; two skyscrapers; and the City of London itself.
Most of the art was the most banal kind of crap you can imagine, beyond parody in many cases. Hallmark slogans in neon, “AI inspired” sound and video installations, and scultures in recycled plastic to make us think, hey, maybe we should use less plastic.
Only two pieces stood out. The first was Guillaume Vandame’s collection of queer flags hanging up in Leadenhall. We’re well used to queerwashing in 2021, but seeing these pride flags, from 1978 all the way to the newest iteration from 2018, hanging in the rafters of one of London’s most ancient markets was strangely moving.
The second, well. Where to start with this. You can already see it: it’s the Wobblies clock above, based on a detail of a 1917 illustration by the venerable union organisation.
I know art yearns to be subversive, but placing a symbol of the Industrial Workers of the World in a location largely dedicated to the crushing of workers as part of a trail sponsored by the motley crew listed above must have seemed a right giggle when conceived in Shoreditch House after the fifteenth line of giggle-powder.
Ah well. At least the trail was an opportunity to explore the city, to stumble upon some alleyways, and to marvel at the old churches and 17th century buildings that survive amid the increasingly anonymous landscape of private estates and empty monuments to the capture of property and wealth.
Modernism of Holland Park
There are pockets of London I simply don’t know. Holland Park is one of them, due to a longstanding prejudice against the inner-west, many pockets of which scream Not For The Likes Of You. Usually I speed down the hill past Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and steel myself for Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, without even spotting Holland Park tube station.
As with a lot of west London, it feels like the Luftwaffe had a gentlemen’s agreement not to bomb the posh people’s houses, and so a lot of the Edwardian and Victorian terraces survive intact. But there are a smattering of postwar developments, from individual private residences to estates both public and private. And these were at which I had come to gawp.
We tried to be discreet around the invidual private houses. The beautifully produced pamphlet guide we were following urges one to not “encroach” on owners’ privacy, and so we didn’t put our faces up against windows or rifle through any bins.
The residence above, on Hillgate Street, was having its hedge trimmed when we walked past, so we tried to be as subtle as we could with the photographs we were taking, like crap spies on a halfhearted mission.
The building above was designed by Tom Kay for a photographer and his opera singer wife. Grade II listed, the cylinder you can see is a spiral staircase, and the double-height living room at the top was to help with the ol’ singing practice. I like to imagine milk bottles left on the step smashing in the late sixties sun.
The block above has the misfortune to be sited on what is now quite a busy road, with young men revving their petro-dollar sports cars up and down the way for want of anything better to do.
This is the smaller of two blocks facing Campden Hill Road, and consists of four maisonettes and signs politely asking you not to lock your bike to the railings.
Woodsford Square, pictured above, was perhaps my favourite place on the route. Designed by Fry, Drew & Partners, and built between 1968 and 1974, the estate is made up of long blocks of four-storey houses, situated in communal gardens with plenty of mature trees and nice benches for a sit down. There was even a special poo bin, semi-submerged into the lawn so as not to affect the ambience.
As with a lot of private post-war estates, Woodsford Square is a reminder that care, maintenence and greenery is all that really sepearates a lot of them for what politicians of a certain ilk would describe as “sink estates”. Certainly residents of Cressingham Gardens in Lambeth, a low-rise development with some similarities to Woodsford, would note with irony their fight against demolition versus the easy, monied peace found here.
The last building I’d like to share with you is this little mews of masionettes, guarded by an intense and staring highland terrier in a high window on the corner.
It’s impressive how six three-storey townhouses have been squeezes into such a tight spot, though many of them looked like they needed a bit of TLC, and half of them could certainly do with some occupants. As with so much of London generally, the number of empty habitations makes us housing-insecure people feel slightly melancholy.
I enjoyed my travels around Holland Park, and there is an actual park, which is rather lovely. I suspect the news that Holland Park has an actual park is the kind of cutting-edge reporting you love to see in this newsletter. Do go along: there’s a cafe and everything.
PLUGS AND LINKS
I MC at a monthly comedy night at Hoopla in London Bridge called Factually Inaccurate Stand-Up. The next one is on Monday 12th July has an amazing line-up: Yuriko Kotani, Luke Rollason, MJ Hibbett, Kate Martin, and more! Please come along, it’s going to be great. Tickets are here!
I also do sketch comedy with Next Level Sketch, and our next night is Tuesday 29th June, when England will definitely not be playing football. This is also upstairs at Hoopla in London Bridge, and tickets are selling quickly! Buy one, you know you want to.