Woman of the week has to undoubtedly be Megan Piper, who is currently spanning the capital from west to east with a trio of ambitious and convention-confounding projects. Over in Olympia, her elegant stand—devoted to octogenarian Paul de Monchaux’s suggestively-shaped bronze and Cor-Ten steel sculptures, and the rigorous abstract panels of 78-year-old Tess Jaray—is the widely-acknowledged star of Art15’s Emerge section and categorically confirms that old is now the new young.
Then last night Piper was also to be found at the top of the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ building in Fenchurch Street to launch The Line, her east London sculpture walk that links the Olympic Park in Stratford to the O2 arena in north Greenwich. The route is punctuated by world-class sculptures from the likes of Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Martin Creed, Sterling Ruby and Antony Gormley. Not the kind of thing normally to be found in east London’s post-industrial docklands.
And if that wasn't enough, the 30-year-old is also mounting an exhibition of large-scale paintings by Martin McGinn in Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery, which occupies the cavernous top floor of Britain’s oldest salmon smokers in Hackney Wick. But the sights of Ms Piper are already also extending beyond the City of London. Pointing out that The Line roughly follows the prime meridian—the 0º global marker that also extends down from London through France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana and all the way to Antarctica—she enthuses: “the idea of a linear walk that brings great art out of storage and into the world isn’t unique to London: it’s an idea that you could do anywhere—the potential is huge!” For this one-woman powerhouse, it seems that the world really is the lim it.
