Spire

Spire was originally commissioned for exhibition in The Economist Plaza in a project run by The Contemporary Art Society. It was shown at Bishopsgate Spitalfields for a year and is now in the collection of St George's Hospital Tooting. Spire is constructed from galvanised steel parts. A central pole is supported segments forming a ring. 42 cables join the top of the spire to the base forming a cone. An entrance is left for the viewer to step in and look up through the dynamic space. From the original proposal: "There was a time in London when the spires of churches were the tallest edifices to be seen. Standing on the top of Greenwich Hill or Hampstead Heath, you could have looked over London and seen St Paul’s Cathedral surrounded by hundreds of spires standing proudly above the city. Now it is commercial buildings which dominate London, and the human scale is lost. I would like to introduce a spire to the Economist Plaza, a spire made of modern materials, but one which questions the scale and environment of the buildings around it. Standing at 6 metres against a 15 storey building it may seem dwarfed, but once the viewer enters it and looks up, human scale returns, and the sight of the apex above with the silver rays of steel cables descending and encompassing will give something of the thrill of a Gothic Church."