An Art Installation In Front Of Moorgate Station
Today, a new sculpture was installed in front of the new entrance to Moorgate station.
I took a few pictures.
Note.
- The sculpture, which is in bronze and entitled Manifold (Major Third) 5:4, is by Conrad Shawcross, who I talked about briefly in Job Done – I’ve Now Had My First Covid-19 Vaccination.
- Conrad is the guy in red t-shirt, who can be seen in several images.
- I’ve never seen a large sculpture installed before and everything went smoothly!
I have some thoughts.
More On The Sculpture
This page on Art On The Underground is entitled Manifold (Major Third) 5:4, where this description is given.
Manifold (Major Third) 5:4 by British artist Conrad Shawcross RA will be found outside the western entrance to the Elizabeth line station at Liverpool Street later this year. The artwork is a vast bronze sculpture representing a chord falling into silence extrapolated from observations of a Victorian pendulum-driven drawing machine known as a harmonograph, which was instrumental in the birth of the science of synaesthesia. This sculpture is the physical incarnation of the mathematics within a chord.
Note that I am of Conrad’s father’s generation and had a large Meccano set, like many of that generation. I must have built four or five Meccanographs, which were a harmonograph, built out of Meccano.
Bronze
The sculpture is in bronze, which is mainly an alloy of copper and tin.
My uncle; Leslie was an artist, who had won a scholarship to the Slade before the Great War, although he earned his living as an engineer. I do have two of his drawings, of my mother and his wife.
But he was also a capable sculptor, and sculpted and cast a bronze of a Hanoverian horse, which would probably be, the family possession, that C and myself would have loved to have owned. It is now owned by his granddaughter, who was also one of our bridesmaids, when we got married in 1968.
I also have another link to bronze. My father was a letterpress printer and his largest customers was a company called Enfield Rolling Mills, who rolled copper and other non-ferrous metals including bronze into various shapes.
I don’t know whether they invented the process. but sometime around 1960,Enfield Rolling Mills started to continuous cast bronze. I seem to remember that their bronze tubes were used in the original UK nuclear power stations.
Because of my father’s long-established friendship with the owner of Enfield Rolling Mills, I used to earn money there for my studies.
3D Printing
Bronze, other metals and even concrete can now be 3D printed.
I suspect we’ll see 3D printed sculptures appearing with greater regularity.
Other Materials
These pictures show Conrad Shawcross’s sculpture outside the Crick Institute.
It appears to be made out of weathered steel, which is often seen used in railway bridges and other structures.
In Denmark Hill Station – 4th September 2021, I talk about how the roof at Denmark Hill station is made out of steel covered with solar panels.
Could outdoor sculptures be made with steel covered in solar panels?
I Tend To Avoid Sun, Swimming, Salt, Cold And Water
I was wondering today, if my lifestyle choices have been my problem all along.
As a child I spent endless hours in my bedroom playing with my Meccano, and in most of my working life I was programming alone in my office, often watching the television at the same time. Even today, living alone in East London, I spend a lot of time on my computer, with either the television or the radio in the background.
The difference now, is that I try to get some sun and even today, I’ve had an hour or so in the sun walking around the local area.
But I don’t eat much salt and I’ve never liked it. So could I be that rare person, who doesn’t get enough salt?
Paradoxically, although I’m not a sun lover, I do hate the cold and C used to complain that my office and car was too hot. This winter though, I’ve felt a bit better by deliberately keeping the temperature down to 20 °C or less inside most of the time. My gut, which is usually troublesome, has been perfect all the time.
I am trying to drink more water, but only in the form of tea, lemonade, milk or beer. But all I seem to want to do is pee it down the toilet!
So can I get decent health, by controlling my avoidances?
One conclusion, I’m coming to, is that when I was living with C, she used to drag me out for walks and probably curbed some of my excess.
So does that explain, why my health was better for all those years I was married?
Liverpool and Meccano
There are various events, cities, techniques, toys, people and just plain things that has shaped my life.
If I take events, there would be the first Sputnik, Sharpeville, the assassination of President Kennedy, England winning the World Cup in 1966, man landing on the moon for the first time, the Six Day War, the suicide of Jan Palach, the Falklands War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and many others. Perhaps one that will mean more to me in a few years time, was being in Trafalgar Square, when London won the Olympics for 2012.
I will be proud of the London Olympics because London is my city. I was born there and when I’m sad, lonely or just plain bored, I make to the most fabulous city in the world. The London Olympics may be a failure because of circumstances, good or bad, but London will do its best. And that will be better than most, as when you throw London into turmoil, Londoners respond in a unique way. Why unique? Because Londoners are the biggest mongrel race in the world and they can draw from experiences like no other.
I met my wife in Liverpool at the University.
For that and other reasons, to me Liverpool will always be my second city, just as it is the second city of the UK. Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham may make this claim, but they are lightweights compared to the city of the Beatles. I sometimes ponder how life would be different without the Beatles and it may be a bold claim to say that without them the UK might have been some insignificant island off mainland Europe. But those four did give England and Great Britain a new pride, that had been lacking since the end of the Second World War. I still play their songs virtually every day.
At one time my late wife shared a flat near the Meccano factory in Liverpool.
I had a very large Meccano set, which was very much part of my life until about sixteen when I sold it, because I needed the money. I’d while away the time in my bedroom, building all sorts of machines. Later when I worked for ICI, we’d use bits of Meccano to make instruments work. Do engineers still do that?
So it was with pride and a lot of sadness that I watched James May’s Toy Stories about Meccano. He built a Meccano bridge over the extension to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. I cried as it was set in my university, the university where I met my wife and was about my favourite toy.
Life is a powerful mixture of emotions.
The Anonymous Widower 