Barbican Gardens

I live and work as an artist on the Barbican Estate and am therefore in possession of what is commonly referred to as "the magic key". This key enables residents to access the three Barbican Estate gardens not accessible by the public. It is an enormous privilege to be in these very quiet spaces and it enables me to engage in my exploration of the relationship between urban and natural landscapes and the effect of the brutal landscape on the psyche of the city dweller. My work aims to give new emotional representation to traditional monolithic and monochrome images of brutalist Barbican. This is most apparent in the gardens where the colours, textures, and light of the natural and urban worlds often coalesce. In autumn, the colour of concrete seems to merge with the fiery leaves. In high summer, the vivid yellow grass frames and enhances the sculptural forms (boat-like balconies of the Towers and crescent windows of the residential blocks) and the colour of concrete emits an almost purple eery haze. The fluid light seems to transcend the super-real or surreal world lifting the resident walking home (and viewer) into an almost visionary world of ecologically organic living. The forms and structures of the trees and foliage of the Barbican Gardens often have a way of taking over the architectural landscape - competing for supremacy with the tall structures and often, to my mind, reigning equally with their brutal siblings.