Plunge by Michael Pinsky
Date uploaded: February 13, 2012
Artist Michael Pinsky has made a simple statement on three of London's iconic monuments: the Seven Dials Sundial Pillar; the Duke of York Column; and Paternoster Square Column.
Plunge is a major new work of art which invites visitors to look up and to look forward 1000 years to the year 3012. The work consists of a string of low energy blue LED lights wrapped around each monument which mark a time, 1000 years in the future, when the effects of climate change have completely transformed the London we know today, with sea level rises changing the city beyond recognition.
The monuments selected are ones that are passed every day by hundreds of thousands of people, whether tourists who stop to photograph them, or commuters who walk by every day without seeing them. Plunge offers an opportunity to see them in a new light, to think about their place in our history and their place in the city.
Together, the Plunge monuments create an arc across central London, following the line of a future Thames that has swallowed much of the capital in its wake.
“As a child, I grew up near a reservoir in Scotland. On particularly hot summers, when water was in short supply the level of the reservoir would drop revealing the spire of a church, the highest point of a village which was submerged for a secure clean water supply. This image of a submerged bell tower has stayed with me ever since. If we do not prevent the predicted effects of climate change from occurring this will become the prevailing image of London, towers and monuments encircled by an ever-expanding Thames.” Michael Pinsky, 2010
The installation was launched on 7th February and will last for 26 days, until 4th March 2012.
Plunge has been created by Michael Pinsky and produced by Artsadmin and LIFT as part of the Imagine 2020 network programme. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the European Culture Programme, Trust Greenbelt, WWF-UK and the Big Give. In partnership with Royal Parks, Seven Dials Trust and Paternoster Square Management Limited.
