We are delighted to announce this new SAHGB-IHR event.
This will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).
This talk will look at two sculptures on LCC housing estates to examine how the LCC used place, architecture and sculpture and displayed familiar London ‘types’ on its post-war housing estates. Franta Belsky’s ‘The Lesson’ was installed by the LCC on the Avebury estate in Bethnal Green in 1959 and Sydney Harpley’s ‘The Dockers’ was installed on the Lansbury estate in Poplar in 1962. Both depict contemporary Londoners: a mother and child and a pair of dockworkers. Of these two sculptures, ‘The Lesson’ is listed but ‘The Dockers’ is just an empty plinth.
Both ‘The Lesson’ and ‘The Dockers’ were installed as part of the LCC’s patronage of the arts programme and sit within the LCC’s wider cultural activities such as the LCC’s open-air sculpture exhibitions. Rosamund West will discuss the significance of the placement of the two sculptures in relation to the architecture surrounding them as well as how the LCC used these sculptures to communicate its housing and community policies.
This talk will contextualize these figures within the LCC’s wider planning literature and communications to show how ideas of planning, architecture, population distribution and community were disseminated to Londoners. The talk will examine the specificity of installing sculptures of residents amongst their own housing as well as bringing in current debates about who we commemorate in our public spaces.
Empty plinth for 'The Dockers' by Sydney Harpley. Installed on the Lansbury estate, Poplar, in 1962
BIO
Rosamund Lily West is Research Fellow at the Survey of London at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She has held a number of curatorial positions and was formerly Paul Mellon Research Curator at the Royal Society of Sculptors. She also collaborated with the Henry Moore Institute on the research season ‘Researching women in sculpture’, held between May and September 2022. She is an Early Career Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is currently finishing her PhD on post-war London County Council housing estates and sculptures at Kingston University.
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Sincere thanks for your support through 2022. Please get in touch if you have any questions.