Dove Place

Dove Place

A moment for art

Dove Place marks the threshold between the established design-conscious Pimlico Road and the new squares of Chelsea Barracks with a specially-commissioned sculpture, 'Bicameral' by Conrad Shawcross RA.

THE MAN, THE MAKER

Shawcross has established a reputation as one of the most exciting and highly sought-after artists of his generation. Bicameral is the latest piece of artwork to join Conrad’s well-established series of public commissions, including Paradigm at the Francis Crick Institute, London and the upcoming Manifold (Major Third) 5:4 at the new Liverpool Street station for Crossrail.

Shawcross commented: “The name Bicameral came from ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’, by Julian Jaynes; Jaynes’s book theorises that consciousness evolved out of the use of language, particularly metaphors. The sculpture is a progression of bifurcating and trifurcating elements that fan out from a stem loosely forming two hemispheres or sides.

“The work is in some ways an Arcadian symbol for reason, humanity, rationalism, progress, whilst the abstract modular structure oscillates between recognisable natural systems such as neural pathways, a set of lungs, or even a schematised tree itself, but in the end it remains elusive to definition.”