Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Barnaby Barford’s “Tower of Babel” Made of 3,000 Miniature Buildings

First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 8, and soon, our exhibition with Virgina MOCA in 2016, Barnaby Barford builds vignettes and installations out of found figurines that he cuts up and reassembles. The objects he uses for his materials are some that most people would dismiss in their original form, but Barford's art makes them relevant and alluring. For his latest installation, "Tower of Babel", the artist's process began when he cycled over 1,000 miles to photograph facades from each of London's postcodes.

First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 8, and soon, our exhibition with Virgina MOCA in 2016, Barnaby Barford builds vignettes and installations out of found figurines that he cuts up and reassembles. The objects he uses for his materials are some that most people would dismiss in their original form, but Barford’s art makes them relevant and alluring. For his latest installation, “Tower of Babel”, the artist’s process began when he cycled over 1,000 miles to photograph facades from each of London’s postcodes. Specifically, what caught his eye were shops in the city of Stroke-on-Trent in England. 3,000 miniature bone-china replicas of those buildings make up his piece, modeled after the biblical Towel of Babel and created for the the Victoria and Albert Museum where it is currently on display. The tower is so extensive, in fact, that the museum has dedicated a daily blog to it, highlighting the individual pieces that went into creating it. At its base are neglected shops, culminating to London’s exclusive boutiques and galleries at its highest point. Standing at a massive 20 feet high, the tower is meant to be a representation of London today and a monument to commerce. Barford says, “This is London in all its retail glory, our city in the beginning of the 21st century and I’m asking, how does it make you feel?”

Barnaby Barford’s “Tower of Babel is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London through November 1st.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Melbourne, Australia based artist Alex Sanson began sculpting in the early 90s with a series of small, toy-like sculptures greatly inspired by Alexander Calder's circus, a pioneer of moving sculpture. Since then, Sanson's repertoire has developed to include both small scale and gigantic kinetic works, some interactive and activated by touch, others hand-operated. His wildly imaginative works have taken Calder's original output and brought to it a new sense of play and movement.
Discussing Haroshi's work is impossible without having a conversation about skateboarding. The Japanese artist's wood sculptures—objects composed of skate decks that look as if they have been melted into new forms through an obscure alchemy—balance loud, in-your-face subject matter with painstakingly laborious craft. Read all about the artist by clicking above!
Throughout human history, stories about wild and elusive giants have been told on almost every continent. Iceland-based French multimedia artist Philip Ob Rey has reimagined such monsters in a photo series of sculptures made of VHS tapes. Rey created "V" HS Project, a set of 5 series of black and white photos and accompanying short films, in contemplation of the future of the human race. Set against the gray skies of Iceland's landscape, the photos portray nightmarish figures wandering a cold and post apocalyptic world.
"When I started to work in three-dimensions, I became free," says artist Mariko Kusumoto. The Japanese multi-media artist, now based in Massachusetts, has found fantasy in the ordinary since she was a little girl, digging through her grandmother's dresser for treasures to play with. Today, she uses a transparent synthetic fabric to bring her imagination to life, creating wearable art that blurs the line between fashion and sculpture.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List