Sean, thanks for the addition to the international conversations about birds post (15 Nov. 2008). It connects quite personally as a living memory. Battersea Power Station loomed over where I lived as a very young child, and I remember the building of the fourth chimney. The last time I visited the power station it was the dramatic location of a huge show of work by contemporary Chinese artists.
The grand scale of the site drowned out the best work and foregrounded the spectacular, and on terms that were governed by the "local" art politics of London based interests. I saw the work, as did many others, but it was the usual chicken run past artworks, so brilliantly masterminded by the Tate Modern model of how best to experience art as a cultural tourist. Tate Modern is also housed in an old Power Station, where the old turbine hall becomes the venue for works that have to compete with its enormous scale. Faced with the big we can feel small. Feeling small means we will feel a pressure to stay as we are. We stay the same and things stay the same.
The architect of Battersea Power Station was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, a noted architect and industrial designer, famous for the design of the red telephone box, of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and of the other London power station mentioned above, Bankside, which now houses the Tate Modern art gallery. Both power stations are on the River Thames that flows through London, another sister city to Shanghai.
Posted by Philip Courtenay with B&W photo of a black swan on the River Thames in London (1973) by Sean Halligan
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