Blackfriars Bridge, London
Blackfriars Bridge: Air-Map, Joy Gerrard
Year
2017
Client
fereday pollard for Tideway
Artist
Joy Gerrard
Service
Commission Management
Location
Blackfriars, London
A collage for the hoarding at Blackfriars Bridge
Building on an earlier hoarding commission produced in collaboration with City of London School, Joy Gerrard developed a visual response to concepts of flow and mapping, the River Thames, and the engineering feat of the Thames Tideway Tunnel for the hoarding at Blackfriars Bridge Foreshore.
Working with collage and watercolour drawings, Gerrard translated aerial views and technical maps of the area and tunnel installation into a bold and dynamic flowing design that is mindful of the ever-changing sky and the dominant squares and grids of the skyline. The work also responds to the street architecture and the horizontal lines created by the road along Victoria Embankment and the Blackfriars Underpass.
“Energising. It really makes me concentrate on the rest of the skyline.”
Not unlike port-holes, multiple circles populate the hoarding and work with a graphic language to abstract the engineering works and aerial views, while providing an effective contrast to the gridded verticals of the buildings and windows that can be seen above. Gerrard uses a playful, elegant palette of off-primary, pastel and neutral colours to great effect, creating a joyous rhythm across this vast area of vertical public space. The artwork can be appreciated by pedestrians and drivers, being bold enough to accommodate brief viewing, but rewards the longer look.
“Air-Map was a stimulating commission to work on. It gave me the opportunity to place vibrant, abstract and colourful patterns right in the street-scape. This was exciting, and contrasted with my current studio work, which is monochrome and more figurative. I found that thinking about the tunnel, it’s linear systems and flows was very visually liberating. I made collages and watercolour drawings as the basis for the end design, and these were unexpectedly fun to work on. The Blackfriars Bridge is one of my favourite places in London. I loved having the opportunity to research maps and aerial views for this specific site.”
Joy Gerrard is an Irish born artist who reflects on how individuals consider themselves within the world, particularly an urban world. Much of her work has involved looking at the city from above, producing visualisations of systems and networks through models, drawings and photographic works.
The images she creates are informed by the underlying structure and design of the city, and closely scrutinise the spaces that enable and contain urban populations.
Gerrard studied at the Royal College of Art, London and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She has been commissioned and exhibited extensively across Britain and internationally.
Most recently, Gerrard has produced large-scale ink on paper works to recreate global political events. Since 2004, Gerrard has installed several public installations, including at the London School of Economics and at Westminster Hospital. In 2020 Gerrard was elected an Associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin and in 2023 she was a Golden Art Foundation Fellow (New York, USA).
She has been commissioned by the U.K.’s Government Art Collection to create works in response to the recent coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. New works will become part of the collection and support its public programme.
For more information see:
www.tideway.london