Adam Dant & The Budge Row Bibliotheque

Contributing Artist Adam Dant has installed a life-size replica of a cabbies’ shelter as the centrepiece of his new exhibition at the Bloomberg Space in Finsbury Sq. Adam’s proposition is that these cherished landmarks are reliquaries which contain the collective unconscious of the city, where only those initiates possessing ‘the Knowledge’ may enter. Yet at the gallery all are invited to step inside the shelter to hear a litany of archaeologists’ dreams recorded by Adam as manifestations of the urban imagination at work.

Complementing the cabbies’ shelter, the walls are hung with a series of the vast intricate drawings for which Adam is celebrated, rivalling Piranesi and Hogarth in their audacious scale and overwhelming detail. The largest of these is entitled ‘The Budge Row Bibliotheque’ which envisions the hole that comprises the largest building site in the City of London at present, filled with a surreal sequence of simultaneous events selected from the last two thousand years of history and lore.

Adam Dant at the Cabbies’ Shelter in Warwick Avenue

The Budge Row Biblotheque (Click image to enlarge)

Post debt crisis restructuring: Fleet Place (Click image to enlarge)

The Abandoned City: Guildhall (Click image to enlarge)

Dismantling the printing presses at Paternoster Square (Click image to enlarge)

An Anecdotal View of Walbrook (Click image to enlarge)

Drawings photographed by Dave Morgan

You can visit the cabbies’ shelter and view The Budge Row Bibliotheque at Bloomberg Space, 50 Finsbury Sq, EC2A 1HD – Monday-Saturday 11-6pm until 15th March 2015

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Imaginary Libraries in the City of London