Until recently, I worked in the hub of London's financial centre known to all as The City, where I plied a trade for 3 years as a researcher, marketer, copywriter and creator of promotional literature. And walking through it last night was a pensively unsettling experience, broken up with thoughts of slight (and possibly unwarranted) schadenfreude for the "suits" who were in for work on a Sunday
But I did not envy them entirely. I missed the feeling of a more structured flow to the day (excepting that my work was broad, ad hoc and fraught with negotiation for the littlest things); of being ensconced in Central London week in, week out; of getting to wear a suit daily. Yet I don't miss the industry. And I hope for a new one to immerse myself in soon
But the Square Mile does have its highlights, and one in particular caught me as I ambled through Finsbury Square. The windows were artfully scribbled on with searching slogans, messages and scattered thoughts by the Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, who, along with Croatian-born artist Jadranka Kosorcic, makes up COMMA 05, and COMMA 06, respectively, of Bloomberg SPACE's COMMA series of contemporary art exhibitions. The ethos behind COMMA is to give a space and free reign to selected international talent to produce new work that will channel the inspiration of their surroundings, while naturally finding a new audience as a result
Kosorcic, gifted in minimalistic expressionist sketches, created a series of portraits of subjects sourced through Bloomberg's internal messaging system, previously better known for exchanging gossip, mulling over rumours and discovering inside information. Combining cartoons, Basquiat-esque graffiti and crude scrawling, Perjovschi took his influences from current political, social and cultural concerns and voices them directly in a manner that could be considered self-incriminatory where The City is concerned, adding new drawings as the run continues, so to remain as close to the issues as possible
The display of his art in the front windows of SPACE was a distracting, and welcoming, sight. Indeed, its bare bones aesthetic seemed to merge perfectly with the austere, stark glass-stone-and-steel construction of its temporary home
COMMA 05 and 06 will run until Saturday 23rd May
But I did not envy them entirely. I missed the feeling of a more structured flow to the day (excepting that my work was broad, ad hoc and fraught with negotiation for the littlest things); of being ensconced in Central London week in, week out; of getting to wear a suit daily. Yet I don't miss the industry. And I hope for a new one to immerse myself in soon
But the Square Mile does have its highlights, and one in particular caught me as I ambled through Finsbury Square. The windows were artfully scribbled on with searching slogans, messages and scattered thoughts by the Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, who, along with Croatian-born artist Jadranka Kosorcic, makes up COMMA 05, and COMMA 06, respectively, of Bloomberg SPACE's COMMA series of contemporary art exhibitions. The ethos behind COMMA is to give a space and free reign to selected international talent to produce new work that will channel the inspiration of their surroundings, while naturally finding a new audience as a result
Kosorcic, gifted in minimalistic expressionist sketches, created a series of portraits of subjects sourced through Bloomberg's internal messaging system, previously better known for exchanging gossip, mulling over rumours and discovering inside information. Combining cartoons, Basquiat-esque graffiti and crude scrawling, Perjovschi took his influences from current political, social and cultural concerns and voices them directly in a manner that could be considered self-incriminatory where The City is concerned, adding new drawings as the run continues, so to remain as close to the issues as possible
The display of his art in the front windows of SPACE was a distracting, and welcoming, sight. Indeed, its bare bones aesthetic seemed to merge perfectly with the austere, stark glass-stone-and-steel construction of its temporary home
COMMA 05 and 06 will run until Saturday 23rd May
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