a way from heaven   (2017-2023)

 

a way from heaven   (2017-2023)  

A design for an anodised aluminium cladding for the façade of a kiosk structure for the River Thames’ Tideway Tunnel, (a 25 km, ‘Super Sewer’ for London).
12m 20cm x 5m 28cm

Commissioned by Tideway for Barn Elms, London.
Designed in collaboration with Arup and architect Richard Lindley from Fereday Pollard.
Fabricated by Alloy Fabweld.

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Chodzko’s  a way from heaven, as a ‘sculptural image’ is permanently installed at Barn Elms, London. His artwork focuses on the area’s connection to Sir Francis Walsingham – the government administrator responsible for intelligence services in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – who lived at Barn Elms Manor. It was Walsingham’s spy system that discovered the Babington Plot of 1586 to murder Queen Elizabeth I and her ministers and to replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, then imprisoned in Carlisle Castle. Anthony Babington’s encrypted correspondence with Mary was intercepted and decoded by Walsingham’s spies,  who thwarted the plot and ultimately to execute Mary.

Chodzko’s design uses a repeated portion of this cryptograph, at different scales, laser cut and sandblasted into the anodised aluminium façade of the kiosk.  Working from a digitised version of the 1568 document, the work faithfully recreates the handwritten script of Babington’s code, originally written with a quill and ink. Chodzko selected four of its ciphers in order to create the repeated enigmatic message, ‘a way from heaven’.  These four codes also resemble symbols on a map: (a) a filter, grille, or drain, (way) a path, (from) a river meander and (heaven) a bridge, all elements featuring in the topography of Barn Elms site.

Referring to the falcons kept and flown by Walsingham at Barn Elms, and the quills used to write the secret code’s ciphers, a row of falcon feathers are depicted in the background of the work, rendered in a darker pigmentation.  The gap divisions between the anodised aluminium panels act as the feathers’ ‘quills’. Acting as ‘red herrings’, symbols without meanings – called ‘nulls’ – were used by the conspirators, dispersed among the significant ciphers.  Chodzko’s artwork incorporates the falcon feather markings as a form of  ‘null’.  As well as alluding to Walsingham’s ‘retirement hobby’ of falconry, and the quill with writing, the bird reference here symbolises a freedom of flight to contrast with Mary Queen of Scots’ incarceration.  Some of the feather markings themselves resemble the silhouettes of a bird of prey, as they weave in and out of the ciphers, as though casting shadows on them, perhaps prompting the ‘preyed upon’ to sense the need to take flight from the hunter, to get a way from heaven.

At the top left and bottom right of the façade are the html codes </head> and </body>, representing title and content respectively in contemporary computer code.  Chodzko places the Babington cipher code in relation to our current computer codes (turning the kiosk’s façade into a form of computer screen).  The position of </head> and </body> in the design alludes to a gap between the head of state and the body of the people, a separation between thinking and action, and the separation of the head from the body (the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, metaphorically and literally).  This lacuna between </head> and </body>  also signifies the lace ruff (worn as a symbol of status and wealth. Portraits of Walsingham, Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots all demonstrate them wearing ruffs), which Chodzko has suggested looks akin to a ‘ghost around the neck’.  The lace ruff references in a way from heaven, also acknowledge the lacewing insect (the conservation of the lacewing is part of the commission’s ecological strategy).  The allusion to ‘lace’ is also manifested in the perforations in the anodised aluminium throughout the façade; lace as a filter, acknowledging the kiosk’s structure as a form of filtering for the Tideway sewer system.  The ruff form, with its figure of eight goffered folds (continuing apparently infinitely, if the figure ‘8’ is considered as ∞) is also mirrored in the repeated and connected w‘s, taken from the code’s lettering for ‘way’ (waye), in Chodzko’s design.  These wwwwwwww…’s at the start of the façade’s ‘document’ could be interpreted as an excessive www, a ‘world wide web’ of coded interconnections, but also to a form of thinking, doodling, meditation, hesitation or stasis – a falling asleep on the keyboard – until they finally form a goal: a way from heaven.

The phrase a way from heaven suggests multiple interpretations; The heavens above into the earth below (including or even via the Tideway sewer system). Or it could be Walsingham watching his hunting falcons swoop from the sky, a way away from heaven.  It could refer to Mary Queen of Scots’ execution (and damnation, from Elizabeth’s point of view) taking her away from heaven.  Or it could allude to the Babington plot itself;  a way from heaven is an opportunity – a plan given directly by god – in order to enable Mary, Queen of Scots to seize the throne from Elizabeth.  In the repeated forms that the ciphers appear in the design they register also as marks she might have made on her cell wall, marking time, waiting, reciting the phrase a way from heaven as prayer. Ultimately, it is ambiguous as to whether the phrase is referring to a path guided by god, or a path that descends away from heaven into ‘hell’.

Chodzko, in an explanation to the Tideway commissioners, wrote: ‘Through this project I am trying to materialise my imagining of the intertwined psychologies of Mary, Queen of Scots and Sir Francis Walsingham.  If I try to empathise with Walsingham,  I imagine him standing out in this West London landscape, watching his falcons fly high above this area of the Thames. He must have felt an affinity with this bird of prey.  As Walsingham reflects on his ‘hunt’ in relation to the Babington Plot and its use of ciphers, and experienced its thrill, surely this emotional state was also accompanied by an element of guilt in what it had led to; the brutal execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the other plotters. This guilt, I feel, haunts the site along with a beauty from its circling falcons.  Now, with the massively transformed infrastructure dealing with London’s waste—what it wants to wash away, its dirt—and the creation of an access portal to this underworld, the ‘bowels’ at the Barns Elm site open a hidden threshold. From here, surreal manifestations of repressed ciphers and related forms emerge, surfacing in the 21st century, as if ‘projected’ onto the kiosk facade. I imagine all of this as a dream experienced by Sir Francis Walsingham as he slept within this landscape, his dream connecting with the dreams of  Mary, Queen of Scots, as she slept in her prison cell, hundreds of miles away’.

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a way from heaven was shortlisted and highly commended for ciria’s BIG Biodiversity Challenge Awards 2023

Tideway art commissions overview.

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a way from heaven continues to explore Chodzko’s fascination with speculating on the psychology of particular individuals from history who he feels affinities with, and whose past behaviour seems to continue to haunt a site in the present. Other examples include Holding the Earth this Way (2022), Expulsion from the Garden of Eden  (2015),  Great Expectations  (2015),  Because…(2013),  and Reunion; Salò  (1998), whilst Hole (2007) is a comparable work for its use of a public ‘screen’ or façade communicating an excess of intimate signals operating in relation to a hole that is functioning as a vacuum of meaning.  Great Expectations  (2015), O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix (2020) and works such as Plan for a Spell (2001), and The Dreamshare Seer (2024 – ), along with a way from heaven, are examples of works by Chodzko that in different ways involve ciphers, or a code, determining the appearance of the work for a viewer.  He remarks “when I look for ‘too long’ into a subject – a place or person – after a while, something aberrant within it appears to be signalling back. Its ghosts are provoked, unsettled by my poking around. They now have something they need to tell the present. But they communicate in a different language, a code, which requires a particularly embodied form of creative listening to comprehend what story might be being told.”

Other permanent, site-specific sculptural works by Chodzko creating a mythology of place include Five holes from a Removed Sign  (2007) (as part of Hole (2007)), Pyramid  (2008),  Holding the Earth this Way (2022).

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