A new installation in Stratford station has people scratching their heads. Why is it there?
London has a tighter relationship with whales that you might suspect. Hope the Whale aside, Greenland Dock in south east London has ties to the grisly whaling trade, and once reeked of boiling blubber. Meanwhile, a pair of whalebones stashed away in Dagenham's Valance House Museum inspired a nearby Moby Dick-themed crazy golf course.
But why is there now a whale tail on display at Stratford station? In this case, the link is less direct. 'Saved by Art, Saved by the Whale's Tail' is an installation by Kurdish conceptual art Ahmet Öğüt. It pictures a whale's tail emerging from the sea, and can be seen (in fact you can hardly miss it) in the windows next to the DLR gates, its title printed boldly on the glass barriers below it.
But Öğüt's piece — commissioned by Art on the Underground — has nothing to do with the city's maritime links. It refers back to an incident in Rotterdam in 2020, when a giant whale tail sculpture saved a metro train that had overrun the stop blocks during a safety test. The resulting image was both startling and Pythonesque, a ludicrous tableau of nature — or indeed art — redeeming man from his own ham-fisted balls-up.
TfL budgets being what they are, Öğüt's whale tail is 2D, and won't be saving any errant DLR trains anytime soon.
