Artists and writers protest against Golden Lane development

Artists and writers have unfurled banners from a building on the Golden Lane Estate in protest at a controversial block of luxury flats that has won planning for a site opposite.

Spectres of Modernism is an installation of protest art banners emblazoned with slogans dreamt up by leading artists and writers including Iain Sinclair, Cornelia Parker, Turner Prize winners Jeremy Deller and Elizabeth Price and Booker Prize-nominated author Tom McCarthy.

The banners hang from the balconies of flats in Bowater House directly opposite The Denizen, Taylor Wimpey’s planned flats on the corner of Golden Lane and Fann Street which has been consented by City of London.

It was originally designed by AHMM but the architect has not been novated and Belfast-based White Ink is now working on the job.

The project involves the demolition of Bernard Morgan House, which the protestors describe as “a classic example of civic modernist architecture completed in 1960 to accommodate 110 key workers”.

They complain that the new building will have no social housing provision. Residents of Bowater House, part of Chamberlin Powell & Bon’s listed Golden Lane Estate, also complain it will overshadow their homes and two schools, the adjacent Jewin Welsh Chapel, Fortune Street Park and the Golden Lane Children’s Centre.

A statement from the artists said: “Slogans such as ‘Zombie Investors Take Stock’, ‘Homes for Heroes’, ‘children need sunlight to grow’ and ‘parasites will starve in this carcass of culture’, oppose the new development and draw attention to the failure of neo-liberal dogma in Britain’s cities; its legacies of social cleansing, housing crisis, and damage to modernist architectural heritage, as well as the art-washing of urban devastation. The exhibition is scheduled to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair when the international super-rich descend on London to invest in the capital’s cultural products.”