Simon Fujiwara - A Spire

The British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara was born in London in 1982 and grew up in Cornwall. He studied Architecture at the University of Cambridge from 2002-05 and Fine Art at the Stadelschule Hochschule fur Bilderde Kunst in Frankfurt am Main from 2006-8. He is now based in Berlin. His first major British exhibition was at Tate St Ives in 2012. Fujiwara adopts a quasi-anthropological approach in his practice and this work was his first Public Art commission. The commissioning committee, which included student and staff representation, sought to create a new outstanding feature at the very entrance of the University, in front of the new Laidlaw Library. Fujiwara's work, A Spire, is a beacon and totem that evokes the industries on which the University, and indeed, the city, are largely built. A Spire is conceived as a soaring visual timeline - a skyward archaeology that connects the past and the present. Tall and cylindrical in form, A Spire is a third spire between two church buildings on the Woodhouse Lane site, drawing attention to the physical qualities of the site and creating a visually arresting moment on the campus. From the pulverised coal integrated at the base of the spire symbolising the coal on which Leeds's prosperity was built to the branches and cables laid into the cast to create a surface of intertwined natural and technological elements which symbolises the current digital era in which organic and man-made materials merge. A Spire creates a unique new presence at the top of Woodhouse Lane, capturing an ever changing vertical landscape and capturing the passing of time.