By Angela Lovely

Is it art or is it rubbish art? That was the question I pondered as I looked into the perfect circle of a hole in the paving at Bedford Square this afternoon. One of my neighbours emailed Fitzovia News to say: “The Architectural Association have excavated a large hole on the South West corner of Bedford Square for what can only be described as Rubbish Art. Go take a look at it.” 

As the picture taken by Andy Dangerfield shows this art installation consists of a man with a shovel loading rubble onto the first of four conveyer belts which eventually drop the debris back into the hole in a perpetual cycle of one huge waste of time.

Perhaps it’s a comment of the state of the trade of contemporary architecture at the moment and where nothing is ever permanent; what is built will soon be demolished and rebuilt and regenerated again and again.

Perhaps it’s a cry for help against the dreaded developers who enslave architects to do their dirty work for them, destroying neighbourhoods, hollowing out inner cities and building apartments that only some overseas investor looking for a safe haven can afford to buy but is unlikely to live in.

Or perhaps its a total critique of the double-speak of affordable housing as churned out in today’s Evening Standard.

Rents start from £1,125 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, £1,400 per month for two and £2,250 a month for three.

That’s affordable housing according to Genesis and the Evening Standard.

I spotted a young man taking a picture of the hole in the ground with his iPhone. I asked him what he though of it. “Not much,” he tells me looking rather bored.

49 Bedford Square, London Borough of Camden, WC1B, UK

3 replies on “Art fails into hole in the ground at Bedford Square”

  1. Like the young man, I don’t think much of the iPhone either, that aside – what did he think of the hole? 😉

    I remember seeing something quite similar on Store St, one man digging up the road and directly behind him another man filling it in. It’s called: ‘spending the councils budget.’

  3. Can’t agree with you Nico… it was a pointless waste of time, effort and money as no doubt was the intention of the ‘art’. However this could just as easily have been carried out without having to dig the expensive hole – with a pile of dirt and 2 men with shovels. As far as I could see, the 2 day exhibition hardly attracted any visitors and now Camden have to reinstate the ground.

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