Spitalfields Sculpture Prize I have been shortlisted to create a large sculpture to be installed outside Spitalfields Market in the East End of London. Below is my proposal, the City Gate. Models of the short listed proposals will be on exhibition at the Allen and Overy Building, Bishops Square, 12 January - 12 February 2010. The public art invited to vote for their choice.


The City Gate Ancient walled cities often have markets outside their major gates. In Jerusalem, for example, a market is still to be found outside Damascus Gate, the most important gate of the Old City. Roman London had six gates: Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate  and Aldgate. The walls stood for over a thousand years, being added to and partly rebuilt during that time. Bishopsgate leading out to the Old North Road, also known as Ermine Street, was one of the most important gates as it opened to a major route. Spitalfields was established in the mid 17th century a short distance outside the City wall close to the Old North Road and Bishopsgate. At that time the walls were still intact and it was not until nearly 100 years later in 1760 that most of the walls and Bishopsgate were demolished.
Today little remains of the London Wall and nothing is left of the gates except a reminder of their former existence preserved in place names. However the geographic location of Spitalfields is still very much a gateway between The City of London on one side and the East End on the other.
Rather than designing a sculpture nostalgically reflecting the styles of the past, I choose to preserve only the enduring idea of a gateway. To create a connection with the past, and an ongoing sense of progress into the future, I propose a symbolic futuristic arch, representing both Spitalfields’ connection to its past and its intention to adapt to the future.

Computer rendering showing nine views of the proposed installation: the sculpture will be a combination of a waveform and a mysterious clock face.

 

The Gate of Time above created for Milan Design Week 2006 is the tallest single outdoor installation I have made. It was 15 metres high.

The Waveforms I have long been fascinated by waves: they are a central part of my work as a sculptor.  I fell in love with waves many years ago when I discovered an unusual form of waves that appear in many of my other works. I usually describe my medium as light and for this sculpture I wanted to find a way to capture “light waves”in an enduring form that will survive indefinitely outdoors. I had to find a compromise with my usual choice to work with ephemeral media on temporary installations and the need to build something that could last. The solution was to freeze the waves in time; capturing forms initially generated using mathematics in a computer program and transforming them to stainless steel. If I could build the sculpture as a giant moving hologram of waves that you could walk through, then I would do that, but at this point in history this still remains beyond our grasp. I am happy instead to see my waves expressed in steel. The sculpture will be five metres tall.

The Clock We often find clocks over gateways; it is part of what we might expect. The clock face in the City Gate is going to be a real working clock, but not one you could easily read. It will be a challenge to those who like cryptic puzzles. I imagined another civilisation in a parallel universe that split from our world sometime around or shortly after the era of ancient Greece. Their planet was the same as ours up until that point and we share our ancient histories. I call them the Binarians.

    As a consequence there are strong similarities and also striking differences in the way their clocks work. They live on a planet that orbits its sun in the same number of days. They have 12 months in a year since their Moon is like ours. Their calendar and even the way they divide the day is like ours. The length of the year was first discovered long ago, at least as far back as ancient Babylon. The Egyptians invented hours and the Babylonians invented minutes and seconds. All these ideas we share with the Binarians. Where we differ is in our counting systems. We refer to our numbers as Arabic numerals. Not strictly true, since our number system was invented in India some time after our separation from Binaria. The idea travelled to the West via Arabia.

    Following the design of the Rosetta stone, I have invented three Binarian counting systems, The Ancient, the Emergent and the Modern. Having  three different systems will be a help if you are intent on solving the puzzle by comparing the symbols, just as the Rosetta stone once provided the key to understanding hieroglyphics. I will give some clues. The prominent Greek ‘equation’ of the Ancient system will prove the hardest to interpret, the smaller characters underneath will be your starting point.  When you think you have solved the mystery, you can confirm by checking the year showing on the calendar. The Binarians count their years from the birth of Pythagoras. The clock in the model is not showing the current time. I recorded some random minutes in December. When it is complete, the City Gate will show time accurately. I have already written the code for the clock, but I could not load the program into the media player I have used in the maquette on exhibition here.