The Seven Noses of Soho — Bateman Street
Attached to the walls of various buildings around the Soho neighbourhood are several plaster casts of human noses. This one on Bateman Street is part of one of London's strangest guerrilla art projects... and you're standing right in front of it.
London · from the walk “Soho's Secret Side”
Bateman Street, Soho, London W1D 3AL
Attached to the walls of various buildings around the Soho neighbourhood are several plaster casts of human noses. This one on Bateman Street is part of one of London's strangest guerrilla art projects... and you're standing right in front of it.
The noses were set up by artist Rick Buckley in nineteen ninety-seven, as a protest against the rising use of surveillance cameras across the streets of London — cameras that many people viewed as a huge step closer to a Big Brother society. So what did Buckley do about it? Did he march? Did he write angry letters?
No. Inspired by the guerrilla activities of the Situationists — a mid-century organization of avant-garde social revolutionaries — he decided to install plaster of Paris and polymer casts of his Own nose at various structures across London... right under the noses of the liberty-threatening Cctv cameras.
And here's the really clever part. Using glue, Buckley attached as many as Thirty-Five noses to important public buildings across the capital, taking care to match the colour of each nose to the walls. He even hid his glue inside a tube of toothpaste to avoid suspicion. The National Gallery sprouted a nose. So did Tate Britain, Piccadilly Circus, the South Bank Centre, and Saint Pancras Station.
Most noses were found quickly and taken down, but Buckley didn't publicly claim responsibility until twenty eleven — allowing Fourteen years for the mysterious bumps to generate their own legends.
And what legends! The most famous myth is that the Seven Noses of Soho would bring great Wealth to anybody who can find all seven. Another legend claimed that London architects used to include casts of their noses on their finished buildings — a lovely idea, but completely invented.
Now, the Bateman Street nose you're looking at? It's painted the same colour as the wall, so it is extremely easy to miss. It sits just outside a coffee bar, beyond the Dog and Duck pub — which, in a Perfect twist of irony, was the favourite drinking hole of George Orwell himself... the man who Wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. The man who warned us about Big Brother... drinking pints just metres from a protest Against Big Brother. You couldn't make it up.
So take a moment. Get a photo with the nose if you like. And as you walk through Soho today, keep your eyes on the walls. There are more noses hiding out there... and according to legend, finding them all could make you fabulously rich.