Oxford Circus Re-Imagined in London by Camille Walala
Camile Walala, who recently painted a parade of shops in east London, got the idea to design a new Oxford Circus at the beginning of lockdown – when she says she was “struck by the silence of the streets” and “the sense of peace that had descended on London in the absence of the traffic”.
Pedestrianised, exploding with colour and full of imaginative street furniture designed to be interacted with in multiple ways, Camille’s Oxford Street is a place of joy, surprise and asymmetry – an antidote to the flatness and homogeneity that often characterise the standard high street.
In a letter accompanying the series, Camille reflects on her 23 years living in London, and credits the capital with sparking and shaping her career as an artist. This project, she explains, is in essence an expression of her love and gratitude for the city, as well as a serious proposal for a new, more enriching urban landscape. Full of colourful, bold architectural structures and 3D surfaces, the images present a vision of an urban thoroughfare that exists for more than practical purposes, inviting numerous forms of interaction. It’s a place for gathering and meeting, resting and rambling – evoking the multiple community functions of the agora, or public square, in ancient Greece. Walala imagines the space as somewhere the natural and the human-made can coexist and complement each other, weaving water and verdant plant life into her speculative streetscape.
