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Urban art: soon we’ll all want to walk the Line
In an effort to bring art to the people, a new London path, due to open this summer, will take the walker through a diverse urban landscape and past works of modern sculpture, says Rupert Christiansen
When the glamorous young gallery owner Megan Piper met the urban regeneration expert Clive Dutton at a party shortly before the 2012 Olympics, something instantly sparked. “We just got on like a house on fire,” says Piper. “I was so inspired by the scale of what he had achieved and planned in deprived areas such as Birmingham and Newham that I knew at once that I wanted to work with him on a project, even though I had no idea what it might be.”
It didn’t take her long. A year later they hatched a brilliant plan that is now coming to fruition, supported by a range of power-brokers and opinion-formers including Boris Johnson, the mastermind of the Olympics opening ceremony Danny Boyle, world champion athlete Christine Ohuruogu, artist Mark Wallinger and Richard Rogers’s architectural partner Ivan Harbour.
“Sometimes the most interesting ideas are the simplest ones,” says Dutton, “They make people say, 'it’s so obvious, why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?’ ”, and this is a case in point.
With the help of Newham Council, Dutton and Piper have traced a path, broadly following the Meridian, extending from the 02 Arena in Greenwich across the Thames by cable car to the Olympic Park in Stratford: a largely flat and buggy-friendly three-hour meander through an extraordinarily varied and little-known urban landscape that will be punctuated by striking pieces of modern sculpture. They’re calling it the Line, and the hope is that it will be up and running by midsummer.
Piper waxes evangelical about the route. “It takes you through London’s backyard – places that until very recently have been closed off or inaccessible. Towpaths along canals, waterways and the River Lea will guide you past docklands, brutalist architecture, Canary Wharf, relics of the industrial revolution, Henry VIII’s hunting lodge, Victorian gasholders, the best playground in London – it’s called the Wild Kingdom – and some amazing birdlife, too.”
Along the way, markers will be provided in the form of some 30 pieces of sculpture, to be selected on open submissions by a distinguished panel on a rotating two-year basis. “It’s an inside-out concept,” Piper continues. “We haven’t got the funds to commission, so we’re calling for galleries and museums to lend us pieces from their basements and reserve collections, as well as asking living artists to propose their own existing works.”
What is also important is that walking the Line will be totally free and permanently open, in an area of the capital where a depressingly low percentage of an ethnically diverse population admits to any participation or interest in the arts. Unlike a sculpture park, there’s no admission charge or barrier to entry: it’s something you can stumble across and pick up or sheer off at any key point, and this will doubtless attract the uninitiated and unaware. As Christine Ohuruogu puts it, “The nice thing about the Line is that it’s bringing art to the people – it’s a cliché, but it’s doing exactly that.”
A smart little map is being designed, Ivan Harbour is helping with the landscaping, and Piper hopes that an app can be developed too. The sad necessity of round-the-clock security is one factor that pushes up costs, but with a budget of £3 million over three years, this is not a project that reeks of wanton extravagance.
Piper is busy soliciting grants from trusts and foundations, but there is no public subsidy on offer, and a big push is being made on the crowd-funding front, with a target of £150,000 that needs to be reached by March 28.
Spacehive.com/TheLine is the link for anyone feeling generous. Boris Johnson thinks it’s “a fabulous idea” and I do, too, so when I finish writing this, I’m going to chip in myself.
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