Graffiti News

The Seven Noses of Soho turn an easily missed detail on London's walls into a street-art encounter with the history of surveillance. According to the Evening Standard, artist Rick Buckley placed 35 plaster casts of his own nose around the city in 1997 as a protest against the spread of CCTV. Their small scale and wall-matching paint were central to the idea.

For street-art followers, the attraction is a different kind of looking. A nose is a recognisable object, but here its relationship with a building matters as much as its shape. The work offers a reason to study the surface around an intervention, rather than treating the wall simply as a backdrop.

The Seven Noses of Soho began as a CCTV protest

Buckley's sculptures responded to the expansion of surveillance cameras in the 1990s. The Evening Standard reports that the Home Office was then spending about 78 per cent of its crime-prevention budget on the technology. That context places the casts within a dispute about public observation and personal liberty, rather than a project conceived only to decorate the city.

Speaking to the newspaper in 2012, Buckley described his interest in the Situationists and their sporadic, unauthorised actions. He also explained his wish to install the noses without detection. The connection between subject and method is useful when viewing the work: a protest about being watched depended on the artist's ability to escape notice.

That does not require a visitor to share every aspect of the artist's position. It gives a concrete starting point for considering why these particular objects appeared on public-facing architecture.

Matching the wall was part of the work

The casts were painted to resemble the walls carrying them, and Buckley initially kept the project unpublicised. He wanted to test whether the protrusions could become accepted as part of the buildings themselves. Installations included locations outside the National Gallery and Tate Britain.

The Evening Standard identified Buckley as the artist in 2011. Before that disclosure, the unexplained objects had already invited speculation. Many of the original noses were removed early on, so disappearance is also part of the project's history. Assigning a motive to every missing cast would go beyond what is known.

On a visit, look at the colour transition between the nose and the surrounding surface. Then consider the outline that breaks the wall's flatness. Those two details explain how an object can blend in and still interrupt a building's appearance. A wider photograph can preserve that relationship better than an isolated close-up alone.

Seven is a familiar name, not a secure current count

The number of surviving noses remains uncertain. The Evening Standard describes the claim that seven remain, while its writer questions whether all seven are still present. The report also says that one of the group commonly counted as the final seven is not a Buckley nose.

The geographical label needs similar care. Five are reportedly in Soho, with D'Arblay Street and Bateman Street among the locations mentioned. Two other reported locations are Endell Street in Covent Garden and Admiralty Arch, both outside Soho. The established name therefore covers a wider area than Soho alone.

For anyone planning a walk, these are useful place references rather than a promise of seven successful finds. Treating the visit as an exercise in observation leaves room for the changing condition of street art. An incomplete tally need not cancel the interest of a sculpture that remains.

The legends add stories without explaining the origin

The promise of becoming wealthy after finding all seven is a legend attached to the noses. Another story describes architects leaving casts of their noses as signatures on buildings. Both give the objects an accessible narrative, but neither replaces Buckley's account of the surveillance protest.

Other rumours linked the nose near Trafalgar Square to Napoleon Bonaparte or Admiral Horatio Nelson. One proposed something for passing cavalrymen to tweak; another imagined a spare nose for the figure on Nelson's Column. The Evening Standard rejects those origin stories.

For street-art culture, the interesting point is how an unexplained object accumulates interpretations. The artist's intention and the public's storytelling can coexist without becoming interchangeable. A useful visit record can include the sculpture's appearance, its architectural setting and the protest history, while describing folklore as folklore.

Visiting is about observing the sculpture in place

The most revealing details are the cast's outline, its colour and the wall around it. Observe and photograph the work without touching or removing it. The building is part of the encounter, so looking beyond the nose itself helps retain the logic of the original intervention.

Buckley's unauthorised method also leaves a question about who can alter a building's surface. Recognising an artistic intention does not settle that question. The work can be considered within street art while leaving the disagreement over permission open.

The noses offer a modest but specific way to experience London: pay attention to a small addition that might otherwise pass unnoticed. Their significance lies partly in that adjustment of attention, alongside the surveillance debate that prompted their installation.

Source: Evening Standard