Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘The London Mastaba’, 2016-18 Image courtesy of the artist.
In July 2018 the Artist Working Group met on the grass in Hyde Park, next to the serpentine Lido.
For quite a lot of the meeting we talked about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘The London Mastaba’. It was an anchor point, something we kept coming back to when we were mid-way through eating, or we lost our train of thought.
Because you can’t not talk about it. It is an abrupt stopping point in the landscape that has to be addressed. What would have normally been an open space between the lake and the park on the other side is now a three-dimensional volume. It demands consideration of how it sits in conjunction with it’s environment. It also implies architectural function; a temporary, interior space that although cannot be seen, can be imagined.
In the mindset of our meeting; that park-is-meeting place-is-eating place, the sculpture had further potential.
The inner volume of The London Mastaba-as-night club for Lido swimmers? Named ‘The Diving Club’ perhaps, with a water-themed playlist that included?
If you inadvertently create a physical space in the act of making public sculpture, are you responsible for considering its potential? – As agreed following their 2017 Turbine Hall Commission, Superflex’s ‘One Two Three Swing!’ has an afterlife, and remains a fixture in the nearby landscape now outside Tate Modern, spilling into the Bankside area.
For Serpentine Gallery, the yearly commissioned pavilions are in many ways one manifestation of sculpture-as-architecture-as meeting place, existing for bodies to occupy in various pre-destined and improvised ways. Although not the intention of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, it’s hard not to think about this object as floating architecture (and in the context of Serpentine, Floating Pavilion).
It’s true that the change of light alters the surface of The London Mastaba. As the sun set during the meeting, the sculpture illuminated itself and it continued to be visible, more so even, as we left.
