Fiona Banner

Appearing at first like abstract forms, reminiscent perhaps of the classic work of Brancusi or Hepworth, Fiona Banner’s five sculptures are scattered around the big public plaza on the riverfront by Tower Bridge. Mysteriously titled Slipstream, Optical, Courier, Klang and Nuptial, the precarious balance and glistening black of these leaning ellipses, imposing spheres and strange cross shapes intrigue and invite closer inspection.

Each form is an accurate three-dimensional albeit vastly enlarged version of a full stop from a variety of commonly used typefaces which lend their names as titles for the sculptures. Though each is proportionate to the others, their expanded scale reveals anomalies latent within an apparently universal and uniform symbol. Like the complexity and beauty of form which unfold only when observed through a microscope, what appears as a miniscule black dot on paper here reveals its intricate and unexpected shape.

If these sculptures are full stops, then we, walking amongst them and the buildings that frame them, become like the missing letters and words of a sentence. Banner gives us in solid form the pause, the silence, the moment we draw breath and reflect. The full stop is both a beginning as well as an end. (from here)