Earlier this year Native Land revealed its latest artist collaboration with artist Hugo Dalton, with a limestone sculpture over six metres high, integrated into the façade at Native Land’s first commercial development, OneThreeSix in Marylebone.
These pieces follow a long legacy of collaborations by Native Land with internationally recognised artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Emily Young.
Dalton’s work is characterised by his light projection drawings and installations, wall paintings and sculptures for interior and outdoor settings, which capture the energy of surrounding areas and anchor it into visual form.
In his most significant latest work, Dalton created a 6.45-metre-high sculpture for Native Land’s first commercial development, OneThreeSix in Marylebone, to be known as the ‘Smart Building’ – which celebrates a landmark moment in the developer’s trajectory. The sculpture is encased within the external façade of the building and was developed from drawings Dalton made of the long grasses in nearby Hyde Park and inspired by the Roman history behind Edgware Road, drawing influences from the fabric drapery of roman statues and carvings. The site-specific sculpture is crafted from limestone – a new medium for Dalton’s portfolio – and emulates the gentle swaying movement of the park’s grass while amplifying it on a monumental scale, bringing an element of the local natural landscape to the new building.
Native Land has a high-level commitment in collaborating with some of the leading artists and sculptors in the UK, and commissioning works which inspire and intrigue not only residents and occupants of the buildings we create, but for those passing by or those living in the locality. Examples of other prominent public realm art works can be found at NEO Bankside, 10 Montrose Place and Holland Park Villas. A series of magnificent, sculpted heads carved from fissured marble can be found surrounding NEO Bankside in and amongst the Pavilions, part of sculptor Emily Young’s mission to ‘wild the city’. These abstract figures, bring moments of interest to the existing cityscape and their natural form contrasts with the neighbouring industrial-inspired buildings, along with Tate Modern’s structured silhouette.
10 Montrose Place, a Belgravia development between Native Land and Grosvenor, integrates a vast, meandering slate wall into the façade of the building’s external wall. Created by celebrated sculptor, Andy Goldsworthy, the piece is a prime example of permanent work with monumental presence that defines a sense of place, and often those who walk past it stop to admire and take pictures of this incredible work.
At Holland Park Villas, our Kensington development next to leafy Holland Park, the focus on art is inspired by nature and centred around the work of sculptors Susie Bacon and Lida Kindersley. Entitled ‘The Conference of the Birds’, these sculptures are based on a poem of the same name which narrates the story of many birds to represent the characters of man and their quest to find the meaning of life. The sculptures take their form in large-scale stone engraved with poetry with a bird also resting on stone. The three birds chosen were those whose characters best represent Holland Park Villas: the Peacock, the Swift and the Duck combining the locality with ideas of air and water in the garden.
Take a look at this image gallery of the art collaborations across Native Land’s different projects.