Bollards

Anthony Gormley in Londen

The most functional art by visual artist Anthony Gormley, and perhaps of all modern art in London, is located in the Peckham district. There, at the corner of Bellenden Road and Choumert Road, stand about twenty steel posts (called bollards in England) that Gormley designed at the beginning of this century. At the time, his workshop was on this street. He was commissioned to help beautify the neighbourhood.

It did help, but not so much on the Tuesday I visited when the rubbish bins iwere being emptied. Yet, even though some were hidden by the bins, they still brightened up the streetscape.

Gormley made four designs for the bollards: The Snowman, The Pin, The Oval, and the Penis. It doesn’t take too much imagination to recognise which is which. Apparently there are more Gormley bollards elsewhere in the neighbourhood, but after finally finding some after first walking down the wrong end of Bellenden Street, I’d had enough of looking.

Over the years, several of the Bollards have been removed from the ground and sold at auctions. This has caused some issues. For instance, in 2021, a woman partially hid the posts she had purchased from Gormley on the pebble beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The owner believed she was entitled to do whatever she wanted with the art she had bought. However, Gormley was of the opinion that the posts needed to stand upright, and the artwork was removed.

Now there are numerous other places where the posts can be found. In Brighton, they are situated at an office building not far from Brighton Pavilion. In Goodwood Park, also in West Sussex, they stand in front of The Kennels building.

At the end of 2019, the four bollards fetched twenty thousand pounds. Last year, buyers had to shell out more than fifty thousand pounds to get one. But on Bellenden Road, you can simply see them for free.

At The Victoria Inn pub, I saw that you could already reserve tables for the upcoming World Cup. I would advise people to get a table by a window. If the football is disappointing, fans can watch the Gormley bollards instead. They never get boring.