Back in June when I first was wandering I caught a glimpse out the bus window, down a side street near Liverpool Street Station and there was this weird house sitting atop what looked like a footbridge across the street.
I went back on foot a few days later and snapped a photo or two hundred and in the back of my mind, as I have passed by the area, I have wondered what it was and why it was there. Well, Mystery solved as I was googling around and came across the website for Sculptures In the City.
Bridging Home by Do Ho Suh is a temporary artwork that Sculptures In the City produces each year. The website describes it
Bridging Home, London, 2018 by Do Ho Suh is an ambitious co-commission, a UK premiere, installed on the footbridge over Wormwood Street – one of the busiest roads in the City of London, near Liverpool Street.
Do Ho Suh’s architecturally scaled installations are informed by his personal experiences, that recreate specific domestic spaces that he has resided in, expanding on his ongoing investigations of memory, notions of home and migration, cross-cultural displacement and integration.
Bridging Home is a series that Suh has been conceptualising over the last decade. The piece is a to-scale replica of the traditional Hanok-style Korean house adorned with a bamboo garden, that appears to have ‘fallen’ onto the bridge at an angle. Upon the invitation to respond to the migrant history of the East End and the City of London, Suh has conceptualised the first physical realisation of Bridging Home series, drawing parallels with his work and the impact of migration on individual stories, contrasting with the glass and steel architecture of the City of London.
Looking a bit more around the Sculptures In the City website I realize I have seen a few other of these installations. Dutch Light leaning up against the side of a building nearby, Stagnight by Michael Lyons, and I am off to see, if I can lights at 120 Fenchurch St, London EC3M 5BA, an installation by Jennifer Steinkamp called Botanic.
