Wrapper - Jacqueline Poncelet
Date uploaded: November 14, 2012
Wrapper - Jacqueline Poncelet
A new permanent artwork for Edgware Road (Circle line) Underground station
Arising from the dense urban landscape between Edgware Road, Chapel St and Marylebone Road is Wrapper, a 1500 square metre permanent artwork created by London based artist Jacqueline Poncelet. Her sculptural dressing of London Underground’s monolithic new building, next to the Circle line Tube station, abstracts patterning and colour from the surrounding man-made and natural environment to create the largest vitreous enamel artwork in Europe.
In what is also Art on the Underground’s largest permanent commission to date, Poncelet has synthesized the local area into a gargantuan mosaic of over 700 decorated panels inspired by the history of the area, its overlapping transport systems, waterways, architecture, communities, and London Underground’s colourful Tube map.
Jacqueline Poncelet established herself as a major figure on the international ceramics scene in the 1970s and 80s but in the last twenty years has diversified into painting, sculpture and public art commissions. In Wrapper, and throughout her artistic practice, patterns and colours have played a key role as storytellers. Poncelet uses them in carefully considered configurations and each has a very particular place and purpose in the overall composition, replicating what is observed in complex and busy environments.
Poncelet says: “Pattern can identify different cultures at a glance, can suggest other places, can conjure varieties of feeling, can change expectation, relieve boredom and calm what is cluttered”.
Alongside the installation Wrapper, Art on the Underground commissioned artist Jessie Brennan to develop an artwork with St Marylebone Society, local residents, photography students and London Underground staff. Inspired by the creative processes Poncelet used in Wrapper, Brennan has produced Everything Meets Here, a minutely detailed 3 metre long pencil drawing of an imaginary landscape situated in the entrance to the station. The work reflects Brennan’s interest in the exchange of local knowledge and personal experiences, memories, folklore and myths, between herself and the people within a particular place, situation or context.
Jacqueline Poncelet: Jacqueline Poncelet established herself as a major figure on the international ceramics scene in the 1970s and 80s. In the 90s she diversified her practice to include painting, sculpture and public art commissions, ending the decade as one of the three curators of the British Art Show. Poncelet has had numerous solo and public exhibitions both in the UK and abroad and has won a number of awards. Increasingly collaborative in her practice, Poncelet often works with architects and is also active as curator and educator. She has lectured in the UK, Netherlands and Canada and one of her recent collaborations includes design work for the Child Development Unit at Guys and St Thomas' Hospital, London. (www.poncelet.me.uk)
The vitreous enamel panels were produced and installed by A.J.Wells based on the Isle of Wight, UK.
