PICCADILLY (RULE BRITANNIA)

This piece was a private commission for Scottish award-winning Chef, Adam Handling to be the main wall feature at his latest restaurant, recently opened in Covent Garden, London.

The artwork is a play on the painting “The son of man” by Rene Magritte and a mash-up on the biblical Adam and the apple and set in the hustle & bustle of one of West London’s most famous locations.It’s setting is focused within Piccadilly Circus, where I stayed in a hotel on first returning to the UK from Cape Town in 1998.

The graffiti on the building covered by scaffolding states “This used to be a hotel” which used to be The Regent Palace Hotel. I have also put up boards over the location of Tower Records, a store I loved visiting in my youth.This piece features the open window featured in many of my other Rule Britannia pieces as well as the same phone box and the briefcase from “Plebgate” and the Polling station sign as a nod of continuity to the series that I have taken so much enjoyment from developing over the past 3-4 years.

The lions have made their way from Trafalgar Square, taking on board the concept from my piece “Nelsons Column” and one of them is standing on a soap box voicing his own timeless opinions.The overall theme plays on the ideas and relationships between old and new and the incurring battles between the two.