Spanning the underside of Paddington Central’s Westway Bridge in London, Colour Transfer is British artist Liz West’s first permanent site-specific sculpture. The artwork comprises multiple angled coloured mirrors, vertically spanning the height of the brickwork to create an optically vibrant and kaleidoscopic installation.
The prismatic shapes mirror the tunnel’s architecture. The colours apparent in the work change depending on where you are within the underpass.
The work appears different from one direction to the other. The coloured mirrors are positioned in a spectral arrangement running from dark red to pale pink when entering the underpass from the left and the opposite when entering from the right. As visitors move, they will encounter the fluctuating effect of light and reflections created by the coloured mirrors.
Through her work, West aims to encourage a new way of seeing. Colour and light together help illuminate, therefore increase and heighten people’s individual visual perception and wellbeing. Vivid colour and radiant light are West’s chosen mediums in which to create new, often site-specific, works of art.
Within her immersive installations, she hopes to create new environments or enhance existing sites, using materials such as mirrors or pure saturation to help draw people’s attention to different spaces and elements of the architecture that they might not have noticed previously.
Colour Transfer by Liz West, is a new work commissioned by British Land and curated by Rosie Glenn for Paddington Central, London and is on permanent display under the Westway viaduct now. The work was completed and launched in June 2018.