Launching on 6 October 2022, Art on the Underground and Kerber Verlag present a new publication on the work of Alexandre da Cunha at Battersea Power Station, to celebrate one year on from the station’s opening.
Join us from 7pm on Thursday 6 October 2022 in the bookshop and café at Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Rd, London NW3 6DG.
Alexandre da Cunha will be in conversation with Lisa Blackmore, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex, who has written on da Cunha’s work for this new publication.
Writer Rebecca Watson will read her creative response to the artwork, ‘That Pink’, which features in the book.
The book will be available for purchase at a special discounted rate, alongside drinks from Bar Bicicletta, with thanks to Thomas Dane Gallery. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite.
Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset is a monumental kinetic sculpture for Battersea Power Station Underground station. Stretching 95m and 60m in length, the artwork incorporates two friezes that face each other along the length of the ticket hall. The artwork was inspired by the former control room at Battersea Power Station and its system of vertical bars that regulated the production and output of electricity into the city. Combining this with resonances of the daily flow of dawn to dusk, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset refers to cycles, routine, the everyday and eternity.
Published by Kerber Verlag and edited by Eleanor Pinfield, the Director of Art on the Underground, the book explores the monumental artwork. Designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio, the book features the entire run of the artwork, alongside archival and installation photography of the artwork and behind the scenes shots.
The publication features essays from art historian Lisa Blackmore exploring the artist’s practice, a geographical and social history of the local area around Battersea Power Station from architecture and design writer Gillian Darley, an essay on commissioning the work by Eleanor Pinfield and a creative prose work responding to the artwork from writer Rebecca Watson.
Alongside the new book, we also launch a limited-edition calendar created by Alexandre da Cunha and Melissa Castro Duarte.
Speaker Biographies
Alexandre da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1969 and lives and works in London and São Paulo. He has exhibited widely throughout the world with selected solo exhibitions including: Duplex, Brighton CCA, Brighton, UK (2021); Arena, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy (2020), Duologue with Phillip King, Royal Society of Sculptors, London, UK (2018); Boom, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2017); Free Fall, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago IL (2015); Dublê, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2011), and Laissez-Faire, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2009). Da Cunha’s work is included in major private and institutional collections including the Tate, UK; ICA Boston, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, USA; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; and Inhotim, Brazil.
Major sculptures by da Cunha are on permanent view at Battersea Power Station Underground station in London, the Monsoon Building in London, the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MI, the Pierce Boston tower in Boston, MA, and the Rochaverá Tower in São Paulo.
Lisa Blackmore is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex, United Kingdom. A specialist in Latin American Cultural Studies, Lisa works at the intersections of practice and research, combining writing on the arts, ecology and memory with curatorial and audiovisual projects. In 2018 she founded the interdisciplinary research group entre—ríos, which stimulates connections to bodies of water through art practice and research. She is the author of Spectacular Modernity: Dictatorship, Space and Visuality in Venezuela 1948-1958 (2017) and co-editor of Downward Spiral: El Helicoide’s Descent from Mall to Prison (2017) and Natura: Environmental Aesthetics After Landscape (2018), The Politics of Culture in the Chávez Era (2019), and Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art (2020).
Rebecca Watson is the author of little scratch, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Desmond Elliott prize. She is one of the Observer’s ten best debut novelists of 2021.
Author Biographies
Gillian Darley is a widely published author, writer and broadcaster on architecture and landscape. Among her books are biographies of Octavia Hill, John Soane and John Evelyn and a co-authored study of the work of Ian Nairn. She wrote ‘The Fancy Factories of Thomas Wallis’ (Hounslow) in The Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs for Open House (2020). The Chronicles of London (1994) is an anthology, co-written with Andrew Saint.
Eleanor Pinfield is a curator and since 2014 has been Head Art on the Underground, leading the ambitious programme bringing art to millions of people every day. At Art on the Underground, Eleanor has commissioned work from a wide range of international artists including Heather Phillipson, Larry Achiampong and Phyllida Barlow. Eleanor commissioned Alexandre da Cunha for a major permanent artwork at Battersea Power Station which launched in 2021. Eleanor previously worked at Tate Modern, where she led the curatorial management of The Tanks 2012 Art in Action programme, delivering a changing live programme of commissions from acclaimed artists. Eleanor is a member of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group and in 2021 was appointed by the Mayor of London as a Commissioner for Diversity in the Public Realm.
