The Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford is making a vast, site-specific work incorporating the entire text of the US Constitution for the new US embassy in London, which is due to open on the south bank of the River Thames at the end of 2016. The piece spans 32 canvases and is due to be installed in the atrium next spring. Entitled The Constitution, it has been commissioned by the US governmental body Art in Embassies (AIE).
Bradford has referred to the US Constitution in previous works. His 2013 piece Constitution IV, made by shredding and scraping strips of a copy of the historic document, which was first drafted in 1787, sold for £3.8m (est £2m-£3m) at Phillips London last October.
AIE has also asked the Ohio-born artist Jenny Holzer to produce a work for the new embassy. She will set into its stone walls quotations chosen by US and UK students.
