I collaborated with NB Studio and SEA to create ‘Conversion’, a two-metre-high fairground-style distorting mirror.
Part of the 26 Bridges initiative for Bloomsbury Festival 2025, the piece presents Millennium Bridge as a symbolic connection between two London icons: St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern.
The title ‘Conversion’ operates on multiple levels: religious conversion (Catholicism to Protestantism); architectural conversion (Bankside Power Station becoming Tate Modern); and the broader transformation of the Bankside area from historic den of iniquity to cultural hub.
At the heart of the project is a palindromic poem that shifts perspective when flipped. Depending on which direction it’s read, dual-meaning terms – ‘vice’, ‘vision’, ‘muse’, and ‘divine’ – switch between sacred and secular significance.
The distorting mirror concept playfully references Millennium Bridge’s notorious nickname – ‘the wobbly bridge’ – as well as the blurred lines between the language used for both readings of the mirror poem.
The poem is typeset using striking matt-silver vinyl lettering, featuring a winding, river-like gutter down the centre to mimic the flow of the Thames.
The 26 Bridges artworks were auctioned in October 2025 to raise funds for University College London Hospitals (UCLH), specifically supporting a specialist clinical nurse for skin cancer patients.
Press coverage
Distorting mirror bridges poetry, design and perspective for NHS cancer care auction
Creative Boom
This shifting mirror artwork is a love letter to London landmarks (and it could be yours)
Creative Bloq
Featured in Design Week’s The Outline on 24 September 2025
Other 26 projects
Besides 26 Bridges, as an active member of the 26 writers collective I have contributed to many projects since 2020.
Click each project title to reveal more details:
26 Memento Mori
I created a short fiction series called Seasonal Transitions, depicting a dystopian future where experiences of death are controlled – but human emotion can’t be contained.
• Spring: The Memory Gardener
• Summer: The Fever Collector
• Autumn: The Change Artist
• Winter: The Silence Keeper (coming soon)
26 Places in Cornwall
My poem captures the rich history of the smuggling cove at Lansallos, exhibited with accompanying photography at the Poly Gallery, Falmouth.
26 Inspirations
I teamed up with my three-year-old son for an exhibition at Bloomsbury Festival on the theme of inspiration. This included a stream-of-consciousness poem giving a snapshot of the world through his eyes.
26 Orphans (with The Foundling Museum)
I chose cult-favourite bounty hunter Boba Fett for this project about fictional orphans and foundlings. Set inside the Sarlacc’s stomach, my sestude explores Fett’s identity as an orphaned clone as he recalls witnessing his father’s death.
Threads of Time (with Fine Cell Work)
I was a senior editor for this coffee-table book telling the stories of the prisoners who lent their newfound needlework skills to a rich array of artefacts.
26 Wild (with The Wildlife Trusts)
I championed the endangered narrow-headed ant through a short poem. I also contributed a haiku lamenting damage to seagrass meadows for 26 Pledges, another Wildlife Trusts collaboration highlighting at-risk habitats and biomes.
26 Weeks
For this project capturing the trauma of Covid-19 from 34 different perspectives, my conversation partner was Jaipur-based cultural guide Raj – who, over the course of the pandemic, lost both his livelihood and his father, and rediscovered the importance of the simple things.
Nick Carson 