LONDON DUST

APT artist Rut Blees Luxemburgis presenting recent film and photographs. 

London Dust is a small photography and film exhibition, responding to the redevelopment of the City of London and the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. As property prices rise, and the pressure to maximise space increases, London’s financial district has seen ever more fanciful towers appear in the skyline. Blees Luxemburg’s images contrast the idealised, architectural computer-generated visions of London that clad City building sites, with the gritty, unpolished reality.

London Dust responds to the redevelopment of the City of London, reflecting on the public computer-generated visions that propose the future city and the reality surrounding these. In particular, they focus on the CGI images of The Pinnacle – a proposed 64-floor tower that rose to 7-storeys before it was brought to an unexpected halt. 

 The film London Winterreise - reinterpreting Schubert’s song cycle - journeys from Shoreditch to the City, passing the Occupy camp in Finsbury Square, the Bank of England and finally the ruins of London Wall. As with the photographs, the film offers a commentary on contemporary London, the climate surrounding the financial crossroads and the city’s architectural transformation.

The photo captures all these nuances, these streams of dirty beige, of grey, of rancid butter, of greyish-brown and bistre, of bitumen and cobalt, of steel, silver and putty, it captures all the vestiges and pulverescences, all the flakes on a hat, all the fluorescent flashes on a protective net, and also the dense chocolate of the river that features a gliding boat, a boat that is not used by voyagers but by tourists who are in town and want to gaze at the Greek ruins, tomorrow or way back, before or after the big city.