Bridge: Vauxhall
Title: Vauxhall Bridge
Writer: Jill Hopper
Creative partner: Rupert Whale
The work: 50cm x 160cm; acrylic on wood panel, framed
Description: Fragments of text, evoking Vauxhall Bridge’s fractured history, break through the surface of this multi-layered artwork.
VAUXHALL BRIDGE
Jill Hopper
Granite workhorse with scabbed paint –
midnight blue, oxblood, custard yellow –
corroded by pigeon shit and graffiti,
doing its job and receiving no thanks.
When the ribbon was cut
they pronounced the bridge too plain;
said it had ‘a stupid want of meaning’.
Hastily, bronze figures were added:
two-tonne allegorical afterthoughts.
Now Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering,
their faces grave, gaze upstream
at the oak posts poking from the mud:
the scars of London’s oldest crossing,
to the sacred island where the bones of the dead were laid.