Thursday 9 October 2014

Lower Grosvenor Gardens SW1

An Alien has landed next to Victoria station, and no-one is taking a blind bit of notice.
The sculpture, entitled Alien, was plonked in place (well, that's what it looks like. Of course I am sure it was done with care and full compliance with all relevant H&S regs) in 2013 for a two-year period. It deserves a permanent place.
For the sculptor, David Breuer-Weil, the word 'alien' has several meanings:
“I have always been fascinated by the idea that we are not alone, that a massive Alien might suddenly land on earth. I wanted to capture the sense of wonder and shock that such an arrival would generate. Every new work of art is an Alien, an unexpected arrival. But I also think that an extra-terrestrial being would look like us, but perhaps much larger or smaller. However, the title Alien also suggests something quite different: the difficulty of being an outsider. My father arrived in England from Vienna with his parents as refugees in 1938. My grandfather was interred as an enemy “Alien”, a great paradox given the reasons he had to leave Austria, something that my family often spoke about. Sometimes immigrants hide their true identity beneath the surface, like this sculpture. Many of my works, both paintings and sculptures, explore the theme of belonging or alienation. But with this work I wanted to use a vast, breathing human form to express the profound feelings associated with these themes. And I needed the massive scale to portray the intensity of these emotions.”
(from the Victoria Business Improvement District website. BID was behind the placement of the sculpture)

1 comment:

Hels said...

You cannot get two more important surnames in the arts in inter-war France and Germany than Breuer and Weil. I wonder who his father was.