Conrad Shawcross: Bicameral is unveiled at Chelsea Barracks

Bicameral, a major new public sculpture by the celebrated British sculptor Conrad Shawcross RA, has just been unveiled at Chelsea Barracks.

Made of anodised aluminium, standing 8m tall and with 693 component parts which

cascade down in scale as they radiate out, Bicameral is an unprecedented structure,

created entirely without welding whilst using techniques drawn from Japanese wood

joinery. 

Shawcross commented: ‘The name Bicameral came from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. The sculpture is a progression of bifurcating and trifurcating elements that fan out from a stem loosely forming two hemispheres or sides. The work is in some ways an Arcadian symbol for reason, humanity, rationalism, progress, whilst the abstract modular structure oscillates between recognisable natural systems such as neural pathways, a set of lungs, or even a schematised tree itself, but in the end it remains elusive to definition.’

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Image: courtesy the artist and Chelsea Barracks

Photo Dominic James for Wonderhatch