Nick Hornby: TELL TALE HEART 

CAMLEY ST. PROJECTS
Camley Street Natural Park
London NW1

www.camleystreetprojects.org
mail@camleystreetprojects.org

Camley Street Projects launches its first ever exhibition by commissioning artist Nick Hornby to produce a piece of work for Camley Street Natural Park.

The new faster Eurostar connection from St. Pancras International means that Kings Cross is now 3 hours and 1 minute away from Disneyland Resort Paris. In response to that one minute, and the redevelopment of the area, he has built a giant model Disney Castle in his studio in White City, which will then be transported by canal to Camley Street where it will float in the middle of the Park’s large pond.

Disneyland is rife with contradictions between the imaginary and the real: the dreamlike buildings have cracks on their physical surface, and the poorly-fitting costume on Mickey Mouse reminds us there’s an actor inside. It is both the materialization of a child’s dream, and the international brand logo of a billion dollar business. Historically, art has grappled with these issues, placing faith in abstraction or romanticising materiality as evidence of authenticity.

A similar contradiction exists in the flawed logic of Camley Street Natural Park: the park was constructed in the 1980s, but only a thin veneer of soil lies on top of an industrial site. The ponds and wetlands were cultivated by re-directing the flow of Regents Canal, which is ironic considering this same canal was instrumental 100 years earlier in the industrialization of Victorian Britain, in creating its network of railways and the urban landscape that surrounds this park. Now, the area surrounding Kings Cross is part of a multi-million dollar development. No longer a waste-land, not yet completely regenerated, the Camley Street site is somewhere between the two. Perhaps it is in this in-between, almost fictional, zone - where nature and culture open up and implode - that this project can tease out histories and fictions. Inside a model park in the heart of Kings Cross, the castle will echo the neo-gothic architecture of St Pancras and simultaneously provide a perch for ducks and pigeons.

Leading the way for Camley Street Projects is curator and London based artist Sinta Tantra who has herself won numerous awards for her own works:

“Camley Street Projects supports emerging artists with a shared passion in developing public art, communicating with diverse audiences and engaging with the site’s unique location. Temporary interventions play an important role in how we look at public art, providing a continuous platform for thought provoking discussion and innovation.”


The exhibition opens in July as part of London Festival of Architecture’s and ends in September’s during the Angel Canal Festival.


http://www.camleystreetprojects.org