Canal St. Commons
Part of Points & Lines
Graham Hudson
Canal St. Commons, 2009
Aluminum, concrete, rubble
56’ 10” x 41’4” x 23’
Courtesy of the artist and Monitor Gallery
…Punctuating the show is an empty flagpole that rises from a rubble pile to form the central protagonist of Graham Hudson’s (b. 1977; lives and works in London, UK) Canal St. Commons. As the viewer approaches, it becomes quite evident that this pole is also severely bent, but why? Did some unforeseen human intervention recently transpire? Searching for more clues, the viewer comes across a series of skewed ladders standing in concrete blocks that due to their angled positions are unable to reach the top of the flagpole. Were these ladders used to take down the flag? Why are they rendered immobile by casting them in concrete away from the pole? Certainly, no would-be usurper could repurpose them to mount his/her own banner. Punning off the shared abbreviation for both “street” and “saint,” Hudson’s work poses as both a reliquary for contemplative veneration as well as a relic or remains of a past and cherished event. As implied in the work’s title, this history was that of the “commons,” an ancient network of public areas that permitted shared grazing, which were ultimately enclosed to deny access in the 18th and 19th centuries throughout the British Empire…
