Project currently under development, images are of work in progress 2025-2026
Spolia Index
Public Art Commission for UCL’s Bicentennial (UCL200)
Permanent Installation, Wilkins Building Cloisters, University College London, UK
A public artwork, commissioned for UCL’s bicentenary, situated in the newly redeveloped cloisters at University College London. The work sits in a 5m x 5m x 5m cubic space that has been carved out of the historical fabric of the Wilkins Building, which in effect, returns it to its original 1826 configuration.
It is 200 years since University College London was founded, its first stone laid on what had been a drilling site, a duelling ground, a rubbish tip. Now, when contemplating the university as an institution for the 21st Century and beyond, a question arises: What should be conserved and what must be transformed when preparing the ground for generations to come – turning it over, churning it over, making it ready for future thinking, making and institution-building?
This question is posed by this public artwork. Materially, the project makes use of salvage from the renovation of UCL’s Main Quad, redeploying original stone as spolia, an architectural term for materials taken from an old structure and repurposed for a new construction. Metaphorically, the project develops through the action of worms. Tunnelling. Moving through the university’s foundation and subsequent development as an institution. Churning. Translating and transforming historical moments, remnants of which are embedded in a wall of spolia: a type of digested index; a teeming ground of archival tangents. Casting. Leaving behind a new layer, both material and metaphorical, calling for the continual process of institutional transformation and change.
Scheduled for installation in Spring 2026, the project has a number of strands: a site-specific artwork, a collaborative means of indexing and an accompanying bookwork.
Project Team
Lead Artists: Kreider + O'Leary
https://www.kreider-oleary.net
UCL Public Art: Sam Wilkinson, Liam Green
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/may/ucl200-public-art-programme-exploring-bold-beginnings-and-imagining-new-futures
Hand-cut letter carver: Maïa Gaffney-Hyde
https://mcgh.co.uk/About
Neon Consultant: Clare Brew & Sue Shepherd
https://clarebrew.com / https://www.lightartworks.com/
Archival Consultant: Colin Penman (UCL Special Collections)
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections
Archival Photography: Mary Hinkley
(UCL Digital Imaging and Archive Officer)
Collaborative Indexing: Nazmia Jamal (Paul Mellon Centre’s New Narratives Doctoral Scholar) and students from the Sarah Parker Remond Centre (Director: Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya)
Structural Engineering: Constant Structural Design (Brian Constant, Tom Ashton)
https://www.constantsd.com
Stone Milling: Artorius Faber (Anthony Smith)
https://artoriusfaber.com
Stone Installation: London Stone Conservation (Nicholas Hague, Florian Kirchertz, Parisha Shah)
https://londonstoneconservation.co.uk
Neon Fabrication: Steve Archer, Avenue Signs
https://www.avenuesigns.co.uk