Shezad Dawood launches HMS Alice Liddell
The artist brings together sculpture and technology at St. Pancras, come visit it!
Learn MoreSt. Pancras Wires - one of the country’s most ambitious public art programmes.
Welcome to St. Pancras Wires
St. Pancras Wires is one of the country’s most ambitious public art programmes. A new work is commissioned every year to suspend from St. Pancras International's roof to be seen by a million UK and international travellers every week.
The artwork is chosen by a panel who seek the submission that is most inspired by the station, its beauty and grandeur, and the history and architecture of the station. Previous artworks include The Interpretation of Movement by Conrad Shawcross, Cloud: Meteors by Lucy+Jorge Orta, Chromolocomotion by David Batchelor, One More Time by Cornelia Parker RA and Thought of Train of Thought by Ron Arad RA.
Current Artwork
When visiting St. Pancras, you will see major artwork installations by Tracey Emin I Want My Time With You beneath the iconic DENT London clock and our latest reveal by Shezad Dawood, HMS Alice Liddell in the Circle area.
Shezad Dawood's 'HMS Alice Liddell'
In 2022, the fantastical HMS Alice Liddell, our major new site-responsive art installation by Shezad Dawood, was suspended mid-air in The Circle area of the station.
The artwork reflects elements of William Henry Barlow’s roof, as well as Sir George Gilbert Scott’s gothic spires of the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. The sculpture’s namesake is the real inspiration behind Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Dawood’s work reclaims Alice as a traveller for our times: a proto-science fiction heroine who explored the quantum possibilities of multiple but connected realities and universes.
Suspended in space, and able to be enjoyed from multiple vantage points, HMS Alice Liddell is painted with a polychromatic finish, in a nod to the psychedelic colourways of imagined wonderlands and voyages to outer space. The work embodies a fantastical vision, where the past meets the future of travel, technology and collective experience, via the space of the imagination.
Tracey Emin's 'I Want My Time With You'
The Royal Academy of Arts and HS1 Ltd. (owners of St Pancras International) revealed a major site-specific installation, I Want My Time With You in 2018, by Royal Academician Tracey Emin.
Depicting the words, ‘I Want My Time With You’ in Emin’s signature handwriting, the light installation is suspended above the Grand Terrace beneath the DENT London clock, hanging on wires from the station’s Grade 1 listed Barlow shed roof. At 20 meters long, the artwork is the largest text piece ever made by the artist.
Tracey Emin CBE RA said: ‘I want my time with you. I cannot think of anything more romantic than being met by someone I love at a train station and as they put their arms around me, I hear them say ‘I want my time with you’. It is also a statement that reaches out to everybody from Europe arriving in to London’.
Scroll to view past and present major artwork installations
Tracey Emin's 'I Want My Time With You': Here til 2020
It's official - Tracey Emin's Terrace Wires 'I Want My Time With You' light installation has a little more time with us...
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Local artist to create a brand-new art installation at St. Pancras
We're excited to announce the artist behind a brand new art installation at St. Pancras
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2018: I Want My Time With You
The Royal Academy of Arts and HS1 Ltd. has revealed a major site-specific installation, I Want My Time With You, 2018, by Royal Academician Tracey Emin for Terrace Wires, the station’s public commissioning programme for new artwork by leading international artists.
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2017: The Interpretation of Movement
2017's art project was The Interpretation of Movement (a 9:8 in blue), by Royal Academician Conrad Shawcross.
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2016: Thought of Train of Thought
The 2016 artwork was by designer and Royal Academician Ron Arad. His installation, Thought of Train of Thought, was an 18-metre-long twisted blade that rotated slowly to create an optical illusion of horizontal, train-like movement.
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2015: One More Time
Cornelia Parker’s work, One More Time, in 2015, was a working replica of the station’s DENT London clock. Reversed out in black and silver, it became reminiscent of a photographic negative. The black clock was suspended 16 metres in front of the original, so for those alighting from the trains the original face will gradually appear eclipsed.
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2014: Chromolocomotion
In April 2014, we launched the second sculpture of the Terrace Wires series at St Pancras International, Chromolocomotion by David Batchelor. The colourful artwork was unlike anything ever seen at St Pancras International bathing the Grand Terrace in a Kaleidoscope of colour.
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2013: Cloud : Meteoros
Cloud : Meteoros was the first piece of public art to fill the momentous space left by Olympic Rings. Designed by celebrated sculptor and British-born artist Lucy Orta and her husband Jorge, the piece was suspended above the vast Grand Terrace for six months in 2013.
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