Artist creates Temporary Eyesore for London Festival of Architecture

The Architecture Foundation has commissioned artist Scott King to create a site-specific graphic installation on the hoardings around a Native Land and Grosvenor development on Hopton Street, near Tate Modern, as a part of the London Festival of Architecture 2008.

The graphic work bares the legend TEMPORARY EYESORE in large lettering spreading across the florescent orange roller-painted hoardings.

On a recent visit to Munich, King was struck by how many civic buildings were hidden behind digital images printed on to vinyl sheeting. The images depicted the façade of the buildings behind them in 1:1 scale: thus creating a kind of ‘simile’ of the city.

His proposal for this installation creates the opposite to that. Here, the hoarding celebrates its own ‘ugliness’, the opposite to the civic buildings of Munich.

The hoarding on which Scott King has created ‘Temporary Eyesore’ surrounds the future location of a new Pavilion by the architect Jamie Fobert. 
Opening in spring 2009, it will act as a sales suite for an exciting new residential development by Native Land and Grosvenor, provisionally called ‘Project Bankside’.

The development, a series of residential towers by acclaimed architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, is due for completion in 2012 and will bring world-class high rise living to Bankside.

The Pavilion will also be host to a series of public exhibitions and art installations over the next five years.  

Following completion of the residential scheme and the dismantling of the Pavilion, this site will be returned to public use and will become an open space for the local people and visitors of Bankside to enjoy.