A couple of sculptures have been installed on the footpath to Cody Dock, by the Lea at Bow Creek, as part of The Line. The website for this exciting new project - "The Line" because it's sort of set on the Greenwich Meridian - is here, for what it's worth. You're better off checking out Sophie Campbell in the Telegraph, or Diamond Geezer.
Anyway, here, halfway down the path, is DNA DL90, by Abigail Fallis:
It's quite fun: twenty-two shopping trolleys in a DNA-style double helix. It is, says Fallis, a symbol of modern society's consumer culture, which has now become entwined in our genetic make-up. They can't help themselves, can they, these artists?
Further down, right outside Cody Dock, is Damien Hirst's Sensation:
Like a lot of Hirst's stuff, there's the feel of a medical model to it (hairs coming out of skin). It's a bit of a meretricious mess, frankly - kind of Grayson Perry on a bad day. And it looks absurdly out of place here, beside the mud flats and old industrial landscape of Bow Creek. I preferred inside Cody Dock - which is now open and spruced up thanks to some help from Kew Gardens and the Cody Wilds project.
Unpretentious and fun - and of course not part of The Line. Still, if Damien et al. persuade more people to visit, that's all to the good. At the moment Cody Dock needs all the help it can get if it's going to realise its dream of becoming a thriving hub. It's so out of the way: accessed either from the footpath, which you get to over Twelvetrees Bridge, or from Star Lane station on the DLR and a walk through the uninspiring Twelvetrees Industrial Estate. Even today, on a Bank Holiday, the place was pretty much deserted. Things will undoubtedly improve when they open up the footpath to the south. It was all originally planned as part of the Olympic legacy - the so-called Fatwalk, now rebranded as the Leaway - but these things take time.
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