Grim Designs

The recently-refurbished St. Pancras station in London was designed with the passenger in mind. To make everyone's journeys more enjoyable and relaxing, the building is adorned with aesthetic flourishes, and public art - to keep the rush-hour blues at bay.

To accompany 'The Meeting Place' sculpture, which depicts two unsettlingly androgynous commuters gazing at each other's cheek bones (below), a frieze was commissioned to artist Paul Day - that he might sum up our collective experiences of journeys and travelling in the modern age.

However, that frieze has now had to be halted mid-production and cancelled altogether. Despite having had his designs approved - it appears that the 'powers that be' suddenly had a moment of clarity and realised that artwork portraying passenger death and recent tragedies might not be the most popular choice for station artwork.

I'm inclined to agree with 'the man' this time. While I hope that Mr. Day's art is completed and displayed elsewhere - I can't help but question the mis-steps in logic when they agreed to have it made. Also cast in bronze, part of the piece was to show a view of a railway platform reflected in a pair of sunglasses, with a man standing in front of a train bearing down on him, the grim reaper at the controls. Further parts were to show rescue workers helping the injured out of the tunnels - following the 7/7 attacks on the underground system...

Okay... so you're in a rush to catch your train, you hate travelling like this anyway - dodging the statue in the middle of the lobby, your eyes are drawn to the frieze on the adjacent wall. A scene of death and destruction on the British railway network plays out in front of your eyes. Not only is a man about to be crushed under a train driven by Death himself, but there is a timely reminder that the transport system is a legitimate target for a crazed minority of religious zealots, and no matter how many Brazilians we shoot dead - they may yet return to cause havoc in the future.

I can see why they decided to pull it.

I know that the railway experience shouldn't be mis-represented through this art - but railway suicides and terrorist attacks are (hopefully) isolated incidents which don't fairly represent the modern commuter's experience. If it wants to be true to life, but not depressingly morbid, it should be a frieze of thousands of people paying more and more to be crammed onto fewer and fewer trains, over-heating and being consistently late to work on a daily basis, repeated ad nauseum.

Actually, that is depressingly morbid - i think they should change it back.

BBC story here