Paddington Square

Great Western Developments, owner of Paddington Square, unveiled four internationally significant public works of art by artists Ugo Rondinone, Pae White, Catherine Yass and a temporary artwork up for a year by Kathrin Böhm, today. 

This ambitious art initiative represents a major investment into the public realm by Great Western Developments, who commissioned the public art programme working in conjunction with leading London-based cultural studio Lacuna. 

Lacuna’s mission was to activate the site as a civic space and urban destination whilst presenting an exciting art programme, reflecting inclusivity and diversity of society and the arts community.  Lacuna’s curatorial approach was to be pro-active, not re-active and invest in long-term community engagement with local initiatives which resulted in the partnership with The Showroom. The result is a fully engaged and engaging programme which addresses the building in the round and utilises art as a signifier (Ugo Rondinone), as murals on St Mary’s hospital buildings (Catherine Yass and Kathrin Böhm) and incorporated into the building above the new underground station entrance (Pae White). A jury of international art experts worked alongside Lacuna to select Catherine Yass and Pae White’s works. 

The programme will deliver public art by critically acclaimed artists that, together with the wider Renzo Piano-designed Paddington Square site, provides a new working, shopping and dining quarter for West London and a world-class welcome to London for millions of domestic and international travellers who pass through Paddington and the Heathrow Express every year. 

Paddington Square is a light-filled crystalline building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop that presents as a geometric cube – hence the name Paddington Square.  

The development spans 430,000 sq. ft with 350,000 sq. ft of office space across 14 floors. The building includes 33 retail units, four restaurants and a new tube station with a direct fully accessible step-free entrance to the Bakerloo line platforms. 

Justin Brand, Asset Director at Hotel Properties Ltd, said:

“From Brunel’s Railway to the Regent’s Canal, Paddington has always been a place of transition from London to the West of England – and now the world via the Heathrow Express. 

“Paddington Square creates a new gateway to London bringing together internationally excellent architecture and placemaking across public art, retail and dining brands to create an exciting new destination for London. 

“The role of public art has been central to Paddington Square from the outset. Here we can showcase works that respond to the space and the Paddington story. We created the public artwork to excite, enrich and inspire visitors and local people alike and foster a sense of connection and pride with Paddington Square and the ongoing story of the area as it changes and develops.

Stella Ioannou, Director, Lacuna, said:

“The Paddington Square public art programme acts as a conversation starter: to demonstrate and inspire the power,beauty, potential and responsibility of curating art in the public realm. Our curatorial approach takes its cues from the vision of GWD, together with Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s architectural ambition to bring one of London’s biggest transport gateways to life through public spaces and contemporary art. Lacuna conducted extensive research into the neighbourhood, working with local communities and engaging with a diverse set of stakeholders, greatly enriching our curatorial approach and the development of these landmark commissions with leading international artists.

While lockdown presented us with new challenges, it also allowed us to develop novel methods for critical engagement with the evolving cultural conversation, which visitors will see borne out in the final works. It is very exciting to see the project being realised and I very much hope the new artworks inspire conversation and debate.  

About the works: 

Artwork snapshot: 

•        Ugo Rondinone’s 5 metre orange yellow hermit sculpture addresses the dual reflection between the inner self and the natural world providing a new focal point for the millions of visitors travelling between Praed Street and Paddington station each year. Conceived from limestone models, the monumental work is cast in bronze after scans of the friable material are reconfigured into solid three-dimensional forms using digital tools. Rondinone responds to the stone’s natural, ancient origins in contemporary contexts and environments, opening up onto the world, to nature, and turning inward on oneself.

•        Pae White’s Somethinging, will float across levels of shops and restaurants both above and below ground, opening out onto a new public piazza and framing the entrance. Developed during lockdown, the piece suggests movement, lightness, dance, conviviality. Familiar patterns entwine and overlap with secret modules of colours revealing themselves and rewarding the viewer as they physically move around the piece.  These modules frame the sky and surrounds as two forms circle each other in a dance of suspended optimism.Somethinging, made across a span of two years is made up of X 1232 aluminium folded panels, X 8040 rivets and includes 20,000 folds of 11 colours. 

•        In celebration of and in homage to NHS workers, Catherine Yass’s large-scale collaborative photographic installation takes over a 24-metre-long wall on Tanner Lane - neighbouring St Mary’s Hospital. Photographed between Covid 19 restrictions, the image is constructed from over 200 photographs of ten NHS workers swimming underwater to make up a seamless whole, with the swimmers brought together in the print suspended on the wall overhead.  Partly inspired by Giotto’s angels in the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy, the piece is made from sustainable vinyl and will be in place for 10 years. The swimmers were selected from an open call with Imperial College Healthcare Charity and represent the rich diversity of Saint Mary’s Hospital staff.

•        Launching on Tanner Lane on the corner of Praed Street, The Showroom presents Kathrin Böhm who asks: ‘Why do we care about art?’. Individual and collaborative responses to this question were explored through public poster-making and knowledge-sharing workshops at The Showroom.  Through assimilating, compiling, distilling and responding to the taped posters, slogans and statements created by workshop contributors, the final banner, designed in collaboration with An Endless Supply, projects the chorus of voices involved in this collaborative process. The Showroom’s rotating programme will continue in future years with two more commissioned artists: Long Distance Press (Adam Shield and Thomas Whittle) in 2025/26 and Harold Offeh in 2026/27.

A jury of leading experts were brought in to support the selection of the artists involved including Lucy Zacaria, Head of Arts at Imperial Charity Trust; Eleanor Pinfield, Head of Art on Underground; Shumi Bose, Curator at RIBA and Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Central Saint Martins; Andrea Schlieker, Head of Collections, Tate Britain; Edwin Heathcote, Architecture & Design Critic at the Financial Times; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Artistic Director of Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and former Director of The Showroom; and Joost Moolhuijzen, Project Architect and Director, Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

Artist quotes:

Pae White “Somethinging, developed during lockdown, suggests movement, lightness, dance, conviviality. Familiar patterns entwine and overlap with secret modules of colours revealing themselves and rewarding the viewer as they physically move around the piece.  These modules frame the sky and surrounds as two forms circle each other in a dance of suspended optimism.” 

Ugo Rondinone “Stones have been a presence and recurring material and symbol in my art. They are the subjects of the stone figures that I began with the monumental human nature installation at the Rockefeller Plaza in 2013 followed by Seven Magic Mountains in the Nevada desert in 2016. orange yellow hermit will continue to address the dual reflection between the inner self and the natural world. Just as the external world one sees is inseparable from the internal structures of oneself, this work allows layers of signification to come in and out of focus, prompting the viewer to revel in the pure sensory experience of colour, form and mass while simultaneously engendering an altogether contemporary version of the sublime.” 

Catherine Yass: “Ten NHS workers are swimming underwater, overhead down Tanner Lane. They flow down this narrow road between Saint Mary’s Hospital and Renzo Piano Studio’s new office building, reflecting the stream of people moving through to catch trains and get to work. Photographed on large format sheet film, over 200 images are overlaid onto blue negatives to create a sense of movement and a deep blue space that leaves us floating down the street between water and sky. The swimmers were selected to correspond to the ethnicity, gender and age of the NHS workers in Saint Mary’s. Photographed between Covid restrictions, freedom of movement was a fabulous thing, and the break from the pressure of working in the hospital felt liberating. Up on the high wall the NHS workers appear to be flying as well as swimming, hovering over our heads like angels caring for the people below.”

Kathrin Böhm: "Art can be many different things to each of us, and the workshops “who cares about art” with local interest groups at The Showroom, made this very clear. It was important to hold a space where different meanings, practices, understanding and expressions were possible, and equal to each other. The one word and value we all care about is freedom:  in art, through art and with art.”

 

Notes to editors 

For further information, images or interviews please contact PaddingtonSquare@Kallaway.com

ABOUT PADDINGTON SQUARE

Great Western Developments Ltd. is a joint venture between Hotel Properties Limited (“HPL”) and Anchorage View Pte. Ltd. (“AVPL”).

HPL is a property developer of premium residential and commercial properties in prime locations. HPL has successfully established a distinctive track record in delivering best in class luxury developments including The Met in Bangkok, the Cuscaden Residences in Singapore and Holland Park Villas in London. HPL also specialises in hotel ownership, management and operation and has interests in 38 hotels spanning 15 countries, operating under international brands including Four Seasons, Six Senses, Como, Marriott and Hilton.

AVPL is a privately held property investment and development company, established in Singapore.

 www.paddingtonsquare.co.uk

@PaddingtonSquare

ABOUT LACUNA

Lacuna is a leading cultural studio realizing contemporary art and events in urban spaces and local communities. Lacuna collaborates with urban leaders and collectives, decision makers and creative visionaries. The PSQ Public Art Programmes is led by Stella Ioannou, Lacuna’s Founding Director and Artistic Director of Sculpture in the City, and supported by Jade Niklai, Associate Curator. Since 2011 Lacuna collaborates with the City of London corporation to deliver London’s largest free outdoor sculpture show each summer called Sculpture in the City, and realizes many more activation, community engagement and corporate art collection programmes.

www.lacuna-projects.com

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

UGO RONDINONE

Swiss-born and New York-based, Ugo Rondinone is a mixed-media artist. Ugo is recognised as one of the major voices of his generation, an artist who composes searing meditations on nature and the human condition while establishing an organic formal vocabulary that fuses a variety of sculptural and painterly traditions. The breadth and generosity of his vision of human nature have resulted in a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, installations, videos and performances. His hybridised forms, which borrow from ancient and modern cultural sources alike, exude pathos and humour, going straight to the heart of the most pressing issues of our time, where modernist achievement and archaic expression intersect. He is widely known for his large-scale land art sculpture, particularly Seven Magic Mountains - seven totems consisting of large stones, stacked 32 feet high and painted in fluorescent colours. Ugo is also a poet, collector, and curator. 

PAE WHITE

Born in Pasadena in 1963, Pae White lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Pae White studied for her BA in 1985 at Scripps College in Claremont, California, followed by a period at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1990, and received an MFA in 1991 at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California. Her work has been included in the 2009 Venice Biennale, the 2010 Whitney Biennial and the 2017 National Gallery of Victoria Triennial. Major public works on permanent display include pieces at LAX Airport (Los Angeles) in 2015 and Brandenburg Airport (Berlin) in 2012.

The core of Pae White’s practice is based in the desire to insert the domestic in the space of art, two worlds that overlap with playful and poetic vision. She merges art, design, craft and architecture through site-specific installations and individual works which defy our expectations of a variety of techniques and media.

Since the beginning of her career Pae White has explored a range of materials and techniques, formal elements being a central focus of her artistic production. Some of her most iconic artworks include tapestries, mobiles, chandeliers, thread installations and neon installations. Her research develops with the study of different materials such as aluminium, ceramic, clay, glass, marble, paper, porcelain and steel. Installations often suspend an ephemeral, transient moment in a physical space that encourage the viewer to look up.

Catherine Yass 

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002, London-based artist Catherine Yass is widely recognised for her distinctive photographic and film-based work, and particularly her wall-mounted light boxes. Catherine’s art features a range of subjects, from portraits to vacant urban spaces, performances to monuments. Her work at Paddington Square will continue her exploration of the relationships between public buildings and their occupants, as well as the documentation of human movement in time and space. Important solo exhibitions include Lighthouse at Galerie Lelong, New York and a mid-career retrospective at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea. Her work is in collections around the world including MOMA New York, Tate, Arts Council England and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Kathrin Böhm

Kathrin Böhm is a London-based artist who considers herself local in Hackney and Höfen. Her work operates in and outside of the art world, practicing in the economy and connecting different trans-local communities. The main interests of her work are the collective (re-)production of public space, trade as public realm & the everyday as a starting point for culture.

For Kathrin culture is an everyday activity and it is everywhere. The way we do things together constitutes the spaces and economy we have and want to have. Her motto is to think things in the act of making, and her emphasis is on translating ideas for a better future into actualities. Kathrin is a founding member of the international artist group Myvillages (Myv), the artist initiative Keep it Complex - Make it Clear (KIC), art and architecture collective Public Works (pw), and the Centre for Plausible Economies. She set up the Haystacks series in 2013 and arts enterprise Company Drinks in 2014.

In 2020 Böhm stopped starting more new projects and started composting what she has produced as an artist so far, in order to make fertiliser for evolving long-term infrastructures such as the Rural School of Economics, Company Drinks and The Centre for Plausible Economies.

https://kathrinbohm.info/

About The Showroom

Established in 1983, The Showroom is a public contemporary art space focused on collaborative approaches to cultural production. The Showroom seeks to challenge the boundaries of what art can be, and how it can be a tool for a wide range of audiences. The programme focuses on collaborative and process-driven approaches to production, be that art works, exhibitions, events, discussions, publications, knowledge or relationships. Through major collaborative commissions and smaller projects, they work with artists and other practitioners who have not previously had significant exposure in London, often introducing international artists to the UK, working in partnership with individuals and organisations within their networks, both locally and abroad. The Showroom is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

www.theshowroom.org

Imperial Health Charity is the official charity for Imperial College Healthcare, one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, which provides acute and specialist healthcare to over 1.3 million people a year at Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea, St. Mary’s and Western Eye hospitals. Our mission is to enhance patient care and support better health in our local community. We fund major redevelopments, research and medical equipment. We also manage volunteering across all five hospitals, adding value to the work of staff and helping to improve the hospital experience for patients.

Through our arts in healthcare programme, we manage a museum accredited art collection of over 2,500 objects and run an arts engagement programme in the hospitals and community. Last year 3,490 patients and members of NHS staff benefitted from our arts activities.