Art on Greenwich Peninsula: Peninsula Square, North Greenwich
Peninsula Square, Births Chimneys and Lightermen: Collecting Greenwich Peninsula, Julian Walker
Year
2007-2008
Client
Arts Council England
London Borough Greenwich
Greenwich Peninsula (Lend Lease / Quintain JV)
Greenwich Millennium Village (Countryside / Taylor Wimpey JV)
GLA (formerly Homes & Communities Agency)
Artist
Julian Walker
Service
Commission Management
Collaborators
Vivienne Reiss
The O2 / AEG Europe
Location
Peninsula Square,
North Greenwich, London
A temporary installation for Peninsula Square
Julian Walker’s art work responded to the historical, physical and social aspects of the Greenwich Peninsula and the way it has changed over the centuries, and will inevitably go on changing. The texts were based on historical and personal records, geology, archaeology and natural history, snatches of conversation, literature and public notices; they were applied to a collection of found artefacts, objects and images, most of them collected locally. The work proposed a landscape of continuous reinvention, and invited viewers to create their own Peninsula stories.
The work comprised three display windows – 6m wide, 3m high and with a depth of 0.6m each containing a grid of approximate 600 cards each with an object and associated text. The majority of the objects were found on and around the site, including along the shoreline and via a beachcombing workshop with local residents.
The artist undertook significant research on the history of the site, the people and the industry. Much of this was at Greenwich Heritage Centre. Other sources included novels and histories of London; publications by local historians; maps, including the Tithe Map of 1844, LCC Bomb Damage Map, and Booth’s Poverty Map of 1889; electoral rolls and census material.
“The artwork is really lovely and thought-provoking, in fact quite moving. It made me want to know more about the people and events referred to.”
“The extraordinary thing about the Peninsula is that people have pulled it up, dug into it, built on top of it, filled up the holes, pulled down the buildings, more or less continuously for 500 years”
Within the large space of Peninsula Square with its hoardings, video screen and other large features, the art work created a very quiet, visually rich element which drew people from across the Square to come and investigate what it was.
Evaluation of art in the public realm can be complex. This installation was located adjacent to the main entrance of The O2 which has up to 30,000 visitors per day passing by. Random counting was undertaken of passers by who stopped and looked at the installation for more that two or three minutes. This was also done in ten-minute slots throughout both the day and week as some times of day and the week are busier than others. People who stopped varied from 21 to 200 people in a ten-minute period.
There were large audience numbers with an average of 6,000 people stopping to look at the art installation each day – totalling approx. 1.25 million people over the seven months it was in situ.
Local residents participated in a morning beachcombing workshop collecting a range of small objects, followed by research on the Peninsula and its industries and possible history of the artefacts found at the Greenwich Heritage Centre. Some of these objects were included in the installation.
Three artist-led workshops were undertaken with year 7 groups at The John Roan Secondary School with the art department.
“The representation of the history of the lived experiences of everyday people across the peninsula in such an art form has left me speechless”
Julian Walker is a writer, researcher, artist and educator. He is an Honorary Research Associate at University College, London, UK.
He is the co-author of Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War (2016), the author of The Roar of the Crowd (2016) and Trench Talk (2012) among many others.