Following an invited competition organised by Modus Operandi, artist Alison Turnbull was commissioned to produce a major artwork to be integrated within the Duke Street façade of the newly redeveloped Wigmore Street building, designed by ORMS Architects. Encompassing the main and secondary stair cores, the Duke Street façade forms Wigmore Street’s structural ‘spine’. Turnbull’s artwork draws attention to this core part of the building, utilising its full height through her design.
Taking the idea of a colour chart as her starting point, Turnbull has created a series of 24 individually coloured panels, organised within a 8 x 3 grid, which appear to float in front of the white concrete-clad façade, casting different gradients of shadow onto the south-facing wall as the sun moves through the sky. Viewed from a distance, the work can also be accessed from ground level through a single enamel panel by the building’s entrance that gives the names and code numbers for each colour, providing a key to the artwork as a whole. Though taken from an existing source, Turnbull’s choice of colours reflects the building’s distinctive local context. The evocative names of the colours freely call to mind both the rich oil paints of the nearby Wallace Collection and the ready-to-wear fashion of Oxford Street.
Describing her aims for the commission, Turnbull has said: ‘I hope that the colour chart will exhort people to look up, something we do too infrequently in cities.’
