We knew this day would come (2047)

2024

59.4×84.1cm

Pencil, charcoal and water-soluble graphite on paper

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It started with a drawing outside Liverpool Street Station earlier this year that could become a large work. I didn't want it to be just a magnification, so I had to look for some inspiration. On the first page of a book about future thinking, I found an interesting picture by Priamo della Quercia. It says it is one of Dante's Infernos where soothsayers were punished with their heads turned backwards so they could only look at the past. So then I thought wow this is interesting, maybe I can just change the setting of the original urban sketching to a fictional scene in the future (2047) where a soothsayer (like Rehoboam in Westworld) is arrested under a new law but some people fancied looking at their future and the two sides protest at the arrest.

The station is changed to "Time HQ" because from what I know and I can see, the area around Liverpool Street is where the old meets the new, which reminds me of my hometown Hong Kong, especially in Central, a financial district like Bank, only a few Victorian buildings and monuments from colonial era survived the changes over time.