Southbank Centre's Festival of Love - Jim Broadbent: The People

For Southbank Centre’s Festival of Love, Jim Broadbent created a quirky installation of 21 wooden figures, as they dress in ordinary clothing, and have real human hair. Each figure looks off into the distance, which Broadbent seeing each one’s vulnerability, sadness but with defiance. The installation was there from 6 June to 31 August 2015.

Work started on the installation when Broadbent saw a block of wood with a branch sticking out which resembled to him as eyes and a nose. The works were inspired by carved figures he saw in the Cluny museum in Paris, which gave him freedom to do the work not to a standard of perfection or even near to finished. He took this approach to the paint as he coated them crudely and applied human hair that were cut from wigs. The figures do not have any names but said that the work as a whole can easily be named something else than The People, such as characters or family.

“I have a feeling that there is something about the obvious imperfections of the ‘people’ I have made that engages out sympathy and somehow makes us love them.” – Jim Broadbent

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