This paper examines two sculptures of Londoners on two LCC council estates: Siegfried Charoux’s The Neighbours installed at Highbury Quadrant estate in 1959 and Sydney Harpley’s The Dockers installed at Lansbury Estate in Poplar in 1962. I propose the legacy of these works – unusual working-class figures in London’s canon of public art – speaks to the socio-cultural history of London’s communities as well as asserting London’s council estates as sites of historical significance.
Informed by Frank Mort’s analysis of the “cultural visions” used in the post-war planning of London to project an image of London’s future that represented both policy and an imagined urban landscape, this paper positions these artworks in the context of the legacy of wartime and post-war planning for London, concentrating on the LCC’s housing of communities, and how these sculptures were intended to speak to those communities. Of the two, The Dockers was vandalised and then removed, but The Neighbours remains and is listed. The destruction of the dockers occurred alongside the decimation of the industry in that area, and the anger and community tensions that arose from that rapid change. The generic, the ‘everyman’ aspect of The Neighbours has allowed the sculpture to transcend time, unaffected by changing work patterns and industries. The quiet silence of these sculptural citizens contrast with the raucous voices of communities and people within London. The siting of an artwork within a housing setting sits within and alongside people’s experience of living on an estate, and in their community.
Dr Rosamund Lily West is Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. Previously, she worked at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, as a Research Fellow on the Survey of London. Beforehand, she worked in museums for 15 years, holding curatorial positions at London Transport Museum, Kingston Museum and as Paul Mellon Research Curator at the Royal Society of Sculptors. She collaborated with the Henry Moore Institute on the research season, ‘Researching Women in Sculpture’ in 2022. She also leads architectural walking tours for Open City.