Elements - Side Street - Westminster

Side Street

September 3rd 2003

The pedestrian link between John Islip Street and Millbank was incorporated in the design of City Inn Westminster from the earliest stage in 1999. The potential of this new urban route to provide a unique opportunity to integrate art with architecture was recognised by Sandy Orr, chairman and David Orr, managing director of City Inn Ltd.

The Orrs worked with Bennetts Associates, architects, and Vivien Lovell,art consultant of Modus Operandi. in selecting Susanna Heron for the artist's commission. Close design collaboration between artist and architects has resulted in the integration of the new work Side Street.

The idea of an 'art' street for public access has been supported by Westminster City Council, Tate Britain and local residents groups from its genesis. The realisation of Side Street is a collaboration between City Inn, Bennetts Associates, Carillion Building, Grants of Shoreditch and the artist..

‘Side Street' is 80-metres long and seven metres high. There are three sections to the street. In the first section, there are four recessed monumental slate engravings from Heron's current series of drawings entitled Elements . A mirrored etched glass wall the Reflecting-wall ' brings reflected light into the covered entrance and enables views around the corner. The roof is designed to create shafts of light, which move along the street during the day.

In the monograph published by Warwick University for Heron's exhibition at The Mead Gallery earlier this year, Caroline Collier wrote:

Susanna Heron's strength lies in her singular exploration of the constitution of works of art and the distinctions between art, craft, architecture and design. She has analysed with originality the relationship in art between the object and the potential for unpredictable 'visual events' that happen later and are never repeated. In this her perception of sculpture is as live event, as process, always in the present and with the potential to be ignored, the meaning left dormant. Shadow and reflection are as vital as matter, chance more valid than prescription. Her independent combination of seriousness and wit has allowed her to make a body of work not confined by conventions or hierarchies but working in between or underneath them to disrupt notions of the obviously monumental and to put across the values of accumulation, of small details, apparent co-incidences and the fleeting instant:

Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)

TS Eliot, Four Quartets (Little Gidding)

Artist´s Statement

I began by accumulating images to evoke a sense of place. I looked at avenues and small pedestrian streets, temporary places to perch and sit such as a wall or some steps, the foot of a cathedral. I looked at stone places, cafe tables under trees, long shadows, and pillars and tree trunks as ways of choreographing space. The street might best be described as a 'walk': on entering from Thorney Street you will have the sense of stepping into a slightly milder climate. There is a sense of passage through light and shade, the wall is stepped in relief to modulate the light, and the roof casts shadows to travel down the street and bring an awareness of the passing day. In the distance light leafy trees and informal cafe tables characterize the central zone which, together with a view of the Reflecting Wall beyond provides a focal point and sense of destination.

The space for the street is tall and relatively narrow. The wall to the neighbouring site on your left is created on a grand scale to give the sense of being in a side street at the base of a major building with tables from the restaurant occupying the area of the street next to the hotel. At the base of the wall a plinth forms the foot and gives a sense of gravity whilst providing pausing and temporary resting places for the pedestrian. The entrance is rectangular, further in you can see four broad bands of black slate are set into the wall and run across the street alternating with light bands of concrete. This theme of light and shade is continued in the roof bringing natural light to the engravings in the vertical panels of slate. From the side, the glass dividing wall with the hotel enables the double storey height of the street to form a backdrop to the restaurant and views into the street from the lobby on John Islip Street.

Four columns informally divide the public route from cafe tables and mark out the public route. The columns are cropped to allow the roof to float over the top like an umbrella and to make clear their complete lack of structural purpose. The pillars too act as informal choreographic elements - enabling a personal leaning place for contemplation or conversation. A paper model of a single pillar and its spatial relationship to the plinth and wall was constructed at real scale in the artists studio and behavioural patterns of unwitting visitors to the studio were observed.

From the John Islip Street entrance themes of light, transparency and reflection are continued. A giant silvered glass wall reflects silvery light and allows a glimpse around the corner into the street. Entitled The Reflecting Wall it recalls the river.

The street is a place for things to happen, a film set for real life, a meeting place,
an escape, a place for contemplation, a place to eat, a lunch break, a dinner date, a rendezvous
It is a walk, a short-cut, a passage to the river Thames.
It is a meditation, a memory, a moment

© Susanna Heron August 2002