Bench - Undershaft, London, UK
N 51° 30.871 W 000° 04.924
30U E 702457 N 5711080
This piece of art is to the south of St Helen's Church on the north west side of Undershaft in the City of London. At first look it appeared to be a vandalised seat!
Waymark Code: WMK6ZW
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/22/2014
Views: 1
The nearby information board tells us about Bench:
Bench, 1996
Bronze
75 x 190 x 45 cm
Edition 2 of 3
Bench is a bronze cast of a park bench in South East London. It belongs to the "Black Bronze" series of bronze sculptures which focuses on the theme of loss, urban decay and low life. Coventry uses bronze to comment on the succinctly on the times in which we live, and also to reflect on modernism: the hardened and blackened material of bronze directly addresses the theme of social decay, and as Coventry states, the sculpture "has a kind of Giacometti feel to it the top of the bench, the rectangle with the two holes, is like a head with two eyes, and the rest of the bench is like a skeletal body".
It still looks like a vandalised bench to me!
The Pace Gallery website tells us about the sculptor:
Keith Coventry was born in Burnley in 1958 and lives and works in London. He attended Brighton Polytechnic 1978– 81 and Chelsea School of Art London 1981– 82. He was featured in the seminal exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1997 and in 2006, he received a mid-career retrospective at Glasgow's Tramway (Art Centre). He was also a co-founder and curator of City Racing, an influential not-for-profit gallery in Kennington, South London from 1988-98.
His work has been exhibited widely in the UK and Europe and is included in collections worldwide, including the British Council; Tate Modern; Arts Council of England; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis;, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2010 Coventry was awarded the John Moores Painting Prize.