Professor in Art Practice Clare Twomey’s new public artwork, Anatomy of Time, has been installed on the west face of 65 Davies Street in London. The work rises six storeys above street level and is the largest of its kind in Mayfair, marking a significant new milestone.
Professor Twomey’s artwork, built from terracotta clay, emerges from the ground and climbs the southwestern corner of Grosvenor’s new 65 Davies Street development. Anatomy of Time draws inspiration from the site’s natural and physical history. The design is based on local ancient plants and traces the path of the river Tyburn. The leaf shapes carved into the surface of the building are inspired by Flora Londinensis, a 1777 study of urban nature by William Curtis that recorded 430 flowering species within a 10-mile radius of London.
Her large-scale, site-specific work examines the interface between aspects of material, skill and values in making, choreographing process as performance. Twomey is a research-led artist actively engaged in challenging and bringing attention to the obscured narratives.
Professor Twomey said: “This work was an extension of past works and of my environmental concerns and the understanding that if we nurture nature, we might not lose it. I hope it will help people to see that if we work hard, we can still find nature, even in central London. Maybe they’ll walk past it, or maybe they’ll have a favourite leaf, or read up on all the leaves and look at their neighbourhood differently.
“I felt it was a brilliant opportunity to make something not only beautiful for passers-by, but for local residents and workers to enjoy. My sense of the two female artists a generation or two before me, Barbara Hepworth and Wendy Ramshaw, making work close to this site was also really important. They both made work bigger than themselves. Their strength tells us why women are so needed in monumental sculpture."
Professor Twomey’s design was selected by a panel from a group of three shortlisted artists through a commission process managed by Futurecity, a global Cultural Placemaking and Public Art Commissioning Agency.
Mark Davy, Futurecity Founder & CEO, said: “Clare’s beautiful, poetic, personal and monumental artwork carved out of terracotta, shows what is possible when a collaboration takes place between architect, artist, and manufacturer. Anatomy of Time is Futurecity’s 130th public art project, which started with Clare Woods working with MAKE architects in 2002 on her first major art and architectural work. Now, 22 years later, Clare Twomey and PLP Architects have provided a new addition to the cultural offer of our great world city.”
Learn more about Art, Design and Visual Culture courses at the University of Westminster.
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