Bicameral

Bicameral (2019) by Conrad Shawcross RA at Chelsea Barracks is the artist’s most ambitious art commission in London to date, commissioned by Chelsea Barracks and curated by Futurecity. It was announced to the public in November 2019.

Following a piece of strategic work with Chelsea Barracks, undertaken in 2015 to identify potential approaches and sites for public art interventions, Futurecity was appointed to work with Chelsea Barracks to develop the artist’s brief for the artwork commission, manage the artist selection and delivery of the artwork from concept to installation. Following a carefully considered commissioning process, Bicameral was selected by an advisory panel assembled by Futurecity, which included Melissa Hamnett, Curator of Sculpture at the V&A Museum and Lee Hallman, Head of Design at Qatari Diar, alongside representatives from local businesses and residents.

Made of anodised aluminium, standing 8m tall and with 693 component parts which cascade down in scale as they radiate out, Bicameral is an unprecedented structure, created entirely without welding whilst using techniques drawn from Japanese wood joinery. It was engineered by Structure Workshop.

Shawcross says, “The name Bicameral came from ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’, by Julian Jaynes; Jaynes’s book theorises that consciousness evolved out of the use of language, particularly metaphors. The sculpture is a progression of bifurcating and trifurcating elements that fan out from a stem loosely forming two hemispheres or sides.”

The artwork reflects the rich botanical history of Belgravia, with the nearby famous Physic Garden, and pays homage to the use of materials and commitment to craftsmanship at the heart of Chelsea Barracks. It is situated at Dove Place and adjacent to the newly opened Whistler Square – one of seven of the sites traditional garden squares. Bicameral is the first of a series of specially commissioned public art works by major artists to be unveiled on site.

This monumental sculpture offers an invitation to stop, sit and reflect under the dappled shade created by the complex arching canopy of the sculpture’s branching forms; suggestive both of a wooded arbour and the neural network of the human brain. It marks a thrilling new strand of work for Shawcross, an artist renowned for his beguiling sculptures, which are a blend of mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences.

Bicameral is one of the two major public artworks by Shawcross curated by Futurecity in London; the other artwork is Optic Cloak, a sculptural intervention commissioned by Knight Dragon for the Low Carbon Energy Centre on the Greenwich Peninsula.

• Artist Bio
• Chelsea Barracks
• Artwork Trailer