Umbilical is a rope spinning machine 10 metres high and 12 metres in diameter and part of the artist's longrunning 'RopeMakers' series. I remember seeing his swirly yarn churner 'Chord' in the Kingsway Underpass in 2009, although to be fair I was more interested in the tram stop than the sculpture. This time we have 40 elevated spools dispensing coloured thread which combines incrementally to create a single rope with a pattern that never repeats. Shawcross likens it to "the aberration of planets orbiting around our sun within a galaxy", rather than just a great big mechanical knitter. It's not new, indeed fifteen years ago it was hanging in the atrium of IBM's HQ in New York, but it was constructed locally and is soon off to Tasmania to hang permanently there. To see it you have to find the Timber Yard at Here East, just round the corner from the V&A Storehouse, and ask the security bloke to direct you to the second floor by lift. At the end of a long corridor you find a huge room with the mighty web-spewer in pride of place, also two smaller loopthreaders to make an exhibition of it. Come before 3rd November, kick back on a cushion and you can watch the inexorable intricate ballet entwine above your head, then maybe hit the gift shop on the way out. (n.b. Umbilical is in Hackney Wick, 300m from Newham)
Meridian-adjacent art trail The Line opened 10 years ago, plonking works of art along the Lower Lea Valley between Stratford and North Greenwich. Its component parts come and go as artists dictate, but have always been a motley bunch eliciting reactions from "wow" to "oh" to "meh". The latest refresh includes this iron bench in the Olympic Park, now officially the first sculpture on the trail, just across the river from the Aquatics Centre. It was devised in conjunction with The Line's Youth Collective, whose 11 members serendipitously find themselves arrayed in portrait form across the back of the bench. On the wooden slats are words meaning hello in over 50 different languages, this to represent Newham's breadth and diversity, while the ends of the bench feature the Bow Bells, a grime MC's mike and two (jellied) eels as armrests. It's quite a melange. Sit down and the words HELLO LET'S MAKE A PORTRAIT TOGETHER are readable on the sandstone base, the idea being that you create an image or video either alone or with friends and upload it via the QR code embedded alongside. Head to The Line's website to see some of the end results and feel free to add your own.
Types of Happiness by Yinka Iloriat Royal Victoria Dock
Also new on The Line, two very colourful chairs. They come from a series of six, they're too high to sit on and they're as brightly patterned as we've come to expect from everything Yinka creates. But don't come just for them...
The Dangleway's north terminal has a separate silver kiosk built to house something electrical, which has long sat inert in a very prominent position. Now Chila Burman gets to decorate it with diverse works of art as part of the Royal Docks Originals art festival. Of the three illuminated panels initially I only recognised the ice cream, this to reference the sugar and ice cream factories that once existed around the docks. Looking a bit harder I unpicked the mermaid and the dragon, also resplendent on neon panels and whose meanings are thankfully explained on a poster because I wouldn't have guessed. On the other side of the roof is a densely-crammed mural "embodying Chila's renowned punk Punjabi aesthetic" in which I spotted several goddesses, a pair of headphones and a Dalek. Perhaps of most interest is the life-sized neon tiger gazing across the lawns towards City Hall, just as a tiger figurine once rattled round Bootle on top of Chila's father's ice cream van, and this'll be up here for a year.
Back in March I blogged about Compressor Square, a placemaking non-entity alongside Royal Albert DLR station named after the cold storage building under renovation on the northern side. That renovation is now complete and this week Compressor House opened its doors in the hope of becoming the go-to community centre and cultural venue hereabouts. I popped in to admire the building and its inaugural artworks, and was even taken upstairs to see the intricate Royal Docksarchitectural model the Mayor's evicted from City Hall. The most intriguing intervention was a work by YARA+DEVINA called Arrivals + Departures featuring two airport-style boards announcing names rather than flight destinations. It was first exhibited outside Somerset House in 2020 as a way to remember the departed, balanced with good news about births and other 'arrivals', with every name submitted by a member of the public. Since then it's been to New York, Norwich, Brighton, Hull and Zürich and is now back in London at its new permanent home within Compressor House. Visit today and not only can you watch it click over but also meet the artists (4pm), hear them speak (6pm) and enjoy a concert featuring music of resilience (7.30pm).
Visions Programme 1 led by Rosie Gibbensat Bow Arts
This opens today so I can't yet comment, only confirm that the film-based exhibition features Rosie and 38 other artists and aims to turn the gallery into "a smorgasbord of recorded performing bodies". I also skipped the Private View last night, thus missed live performances of It Is Wanting, Blow, Corporate Séance and I Left My Vibrator In A Cave. If you're visiting Bus Stop M any time before 9th November, it's literally nextdoor. (n.b. Bow Arts is on Bow Road, 300m from Newham)
