Places as people, maps by Adam Dant

 

The image above is taken from the Spitalfields Life blog which today describes the amazing work of Adam Dant. Follow this link to see more images. Adam Dant’s map describes a journey through London as if through the human digestive tract from the mouth in Whitehall to the rectum in Whitechapel. You will notice that he has placed the brain in Westminster, the liver in Fleet St, the heart at St Paul’s, the stomach in the City and the genitals in the East End.

This is just one of series of maps of big cities that Adam has depicted in such a way as to portray their essential qualities, rendered as huge ink drawings of double-page plates from volumes in the mythical Library of Dr London  and executed while touring around European capitals this summer . Other volumes in this collection of giant books hold engravings and charts which display Paris constructed from the bones of Liberty,  several alternative versions of Manhattan, and Tokyo's subway system as a tangled knot of 'Shunga print' style figures.

The drawings  will be exhibited in a show which opens tonight at Hales Gallery.

Adam Dant
From the Library of Dr London

7 Sep - 6 Oct 2012

Private view: Thursday 6 September 6-9pm

Hales Gallery

Tea Building
7 Bethnal Green Road
London E1 6LA
T 44 (0)20 7033 1938
F 44 (0)20 7033 1939