less is moore [feat #8]

an absence of sleep and presence of years weighed heavy as the first of three alarms went off at 3:55 am on january 28th. a birthday (mine) to be celebrated by a sixteen hour walk, lassoing the city and every publicly accessible henry moore sculpture in it. 

an uber was about the only feasible way to make it to walthamstow for 5:30, the cost of which would eclipse any transport savings that might have resulted from walking the 36 miles. there was nothing economical about it. efficiency was not the course of the day. then perhaps that depends on your perspective, seen through the eyes of a pedestrianist, there was no alternative.

this project went far beyond a tick-box exercise of seeing every moore, the goal was more ambitious: to integrate the work, the city and ourselves. the inclusion of a bus, a bike, or a car would insert something artificial between the three, walking and walking alone was the only way to make sense of the experience. 

the uber arrived at walthamstow forest town hall which despite the building dating back to the 30s, appeared more like a hologram that night, something entirely unreal and out-of-place. Behind it stood moore’s enormous fibre glass arch, a material which seemed to add to the transience of the whole setting - in fact the arch is a loan piece, only due to be in walthamstow for four years (a line everyone who ever moved there has told themselves).

moore’s arches invite you in, that they are fenced off in hyde park seems to miss the point. here we could walk in and around the work, and like with every moore, each angle presented a new abstract shape to consider in relation to its context, this time against a starless night sky and spectral town hall.  

after a few laps through the arch the night beckoned and we set off down the mineshaft to canary wharf - a roughly three hour walk during which the sun would rise, perceptibly or otherwise.

walthamstow has many faces, and the one by st mary’s church is one of its most handsome. on a past walk we were invited onto the roof of the church, the view, which in august was set against a pale blue sky and the city rolled out like a kaleidoscopic carpet all the way to the horizon. even if today I could only see a couple of yards in front, i knew it was still there, a little sodden, but inviting the same attention it always did. 

from walthamstow, we cut through leyton to that much maligned pocket of the city the olympic park - on one side old wharfs now co-working spaces & craft beer halls, on the other, the olympic village and the newly sprung heights of stratford. we crossed what seemed like an endless motorway, four lone pedestrianists on their way to that emerald city. 

canary wharf is so completely incongruous with its surroundings, one might imagine it not possible to simply walk there. that perhaps one reason they had to invent an entirely new mode of transport was because some supernatural threshold had to be be crossed, and on that morning it did feel that way. the rest of the city seemed to crash against it like great waves, once full of life now petrified into an inhospitable reef of traffic islands.

we navigated that final treacherous stretch and headed straight to cabot square where we met moore’s draped seated woman, excavated from her previous home in stepney, and now surrounded by the machinations of capital, she grips her bench and looks defiantly toward the new city, plotting her own next move. 

we bid goodbye and headed to our next stop - greenwich park. as we passed canary wharf station the sun broke free, gilding a cloud that rose like another wave from a part of the city that never felt more like an apparition.  moments after being dwarfed by canary wharf cloudscrapers we found ourselves in ‘mudchute farm’ trudging through the source of its name and reminded that all we’d just seen rose from exactly that - mud - land taken from that lumbering giant that had more a part to play in the creation of the city than any king or queen. soon we were face-to-face with that giant, looking out across it, to that tryingly symmetrical naval college and greenwich park the site of our next mooring.

the greenwich foot tunnel has been transporting pedestrianists since 1902, and today, despite ample signage indicating its prohibition, a few errant cyclists were also given safe passage. once through the tunnel we approached the park with fresh, if a little damp legs and headed straight to the next moore - knife’s edge. again this work changes entirely depending on the angle from which you view it. after some circuits, a figure began to emerge from the sharp blade, perhaps a reminder that birth, or rebirth demands separation, but also that absolute separation is always an illusion, separation and its scars remain irrevocably part of us. it was now 9 am and the city was very much awake, we looked out toward it, from here its cacophonous symphony was soundless and still, yet we still felt its siren pull, and without a word, we headed off into it.  

somewhere around deptford, we became aware for the first time that the day, which at 5am seemed would stretch on for eternity to accommodate any number of moores and miles, would in fact end, whether we liked it or not. propelled by the pressure of time or more accurately our awareness of it, we sped to the heart of the city, a two hour walk through rotherhithe and bermondsey, eventually crossing london bridge, that gateway to the city since roman times. 

beating the google estimate by over half an hour we walked triumphantly over the bridge, and after a thwarted attempt to see a moore altar at st stephen’s walbrook, we headed straight to st pauls. there are no more breathtaking views than st pauls looming expanse caught between the lilliputian facades of a winding city alley - as much as it’s nice to know we can see it from richmond or hampstead - there is nothing like seeing it monopolise a city vista up close, appearing as if through a magnifying glass.

once at st pauls, our counsel (t. murray) laid out well-rehearsed arguments as to why we were exempt from any entrance fee. we were duly directed straight to moore’s mother and child. here we were also joined by a fifth pedestrianist and questions of union and separation posed by knife's edge were presented again, this time by mother and child, shown at once separate and part of the same.we left st pauls spiritually full but earthly stomachs demanded their own delight and beppe’s cafe by st bartholomew’s hospital was happy to oblige. satiation in the form of every breakfast food known to man placed between two slices of fresh bread were quickly dispatched with a round of diet cokes (ad). 

at the black friars pub we picked up a sixth pedestrianist and from here hugged the thames to westminster where our next moore waited. knife edge in two pieces viewed against the backdrop of the houses of parliament, invited a different interpretation to the one seen earlier in greenwich park, as i stood and imagined that emblem of democracy continuing its crawling slump into the thames, i thought sometimes a clean break with the past might be something to aim for, even if achieving it was nothing more than wishful thinking .  

from westminster we headed to the nearby st jame’s park station, where after a few false sightings, we caught a glimpse of that ever evasive ‘west wind’ - moore was said to have taken his future wife on a date to watch him carve the relief. one hopes the weather was better and she brought a seat. 

a west wind was the opposite of what we needed if we had any hope of making it out to hammersmith before the day ended, but i am getting ahead of myself, before that, the home of moore beckoned - tate britain - a tantalizing prospect - 30 moores and underfloor heating. 

if the collection inside tate britain wasn’t enough, there were two others outside. the first hidden (at least to every student we asked) in the courtyard of the nearby chelsea college of arts. the surface of this reclining figure, a far cry from the smooth bronzes inside the tate. its surface rough, covered in deep, coarse grooves. these scarred bronzes, that in spite of surface attacks stand robust and stoical to the onslaught, always seemed like messages of hope, a symbol of the resilience of the spirit. that this particular one stands on the old site of millbank prison, bentham’s infamous panopticon, a site of unimaginable suffering, seemed particularly apt.

from the college we headed straight to the tate to warm up and after a quick hello to the 30 odd works we picked up our final pedestrianist and crossed our creator and guide via vauxhaull bridge, heading south to our next moore. on the way, somewhere in kennington, a cavernous pool of crystal clear water appeared on the side of the road like something from a greek pastoral, we made our offerings to whatever nymphs hid out of sight and strode on to the brandon estate to see our second reclining figure.

after 9 hours and 26 miles of walking, with another 10 miles to go, a reclining figure was the last thing any of us needed to see, but of all the moores so far, this one had an energy, a contagious vitality that struck every one of us. the work sits in a large open space, which means you first see it from afar, having time to walk with it and watch it grow and morph, as light and shadow glide across its surface. then your attention begins to sway between the work and the setting, the five large tower blocks that surround it, and you become aware people live with this thing. the work occupies a position that makes it almost impossible for anyone there to ignore. its these countless relationships that multiply its meanings, even if now they remain hidden to you, behind the windows of the many hundreds of flats that look out to it everyday. 

still dizzy from the multiplicity of meaning pondered at brandon estate, i managed to lead the group twice round oval cricket ground. navigation duties were promptly handed back to tom and we headed to battersea park. past vauxhall is nine elms, although vauxhall seems an entirely better suited name to describe the area, which is completely absent of not just nature but life itself. its nadir the gargantuan us embassy with its bulbous growths and most vulgar of water features. 

it was in that desolate land on the way to battersea park, that began a rain of biblical proportions (old testament) and we were forced into the nearest waitrose for cover. writing this now i like to imagine the weather in nine elms is always that bad and would appreciate no evidence to the contrary. once we accepted the rain would not stop and it was our fault for passing through such a karmically indebted area, we squelched onto battersea park to find three standing figures. 

stained by the rain and barely visible in the dusk light these ethereal figures added to the sense of delirium that twelve hours of walking is wont to invite. they were based on drawings moore made in bomb shelters during the second world war and they were placed in the park in 1950, about 5 years before Battersea Power Station was finally completed. it is odd to think that the power station in its original form lasted just 20 years, and these three are still here 75 years later, looking to the sky for a threat that’s yet to arrive. from battersea we pressed on to hammersmith, glad the rain had briefly relented. we had reached the 30 mile mark, when the body begins to inform the mind that it was not built for this amount of walking. feet and legs start to feel like those of a moore brass. nevertheless, heavy legs were dragged by spirits buoyed by the harmony of a troupe of pedestrianists walking in unison. finally at charring cross hospital a last reclining figure, cloaked in night was glimpsed through squinting eyes held up by tired legs. 

this would be my last moore of the day, with one hour before i had to be at my own birthday in a hampstead pub, the reality of completing four more hours of walking landed. i chaperoned the group to hyde park which seemed a fitting end to a walk which began 14 hours earlier, at an arch on the other side of the city, an arch that invited me in to walk through it and contemplate it with fresh eyes on fresh legs, to now, where an arch lay behind not one but two wrought iron fences, the message to your humble author was a simple one - less is moore. 

so after 36 miles and as many moores, i struck a reclining figure in the back of an uber on the way to hampstead and thought about moore and the city.

cities aren’t sculpted, at least the good ones aren’t, they aren’t the product of one mind, they’re tumorous growths - the product of countless minds and full of incongruities and contradictions. to walk is to bring these contradictions side-by-side, and to make sense of them, even if only at a subcutaneous level, and in doing so, to find unity not separation. it is this capacity, to find a connective tissue between the seemingly disconnected that lies at the origin of everything.