In February 1992, German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol unveiled an ambitious public project in and by the River Thames. A monumental head was placed on one obsolete bridge pillar by Blackfriars Bridge, and downstream a smaller, life-sized figure was attached to a buoy. Like all Balkenhol's sculpture, they were carved in wood, and coloured. Whilst the head on the bridge pillar was static and hieratic, the figure in the river was in constant motion, vulnerable and uprooted. Balkenhol's sculptures embody a contemporary urban condition, the estrangement of the individual within the urban crowd.
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