Current Exhibition SATOSHI TAKEMURA - POSTBOXES OF BN11 [BRIGHTON AREA] UNTIL JULY 19
IN ALL created nature,' said G K Chesterton, 'there is not perhaps anything so completely ugly as a pillar box.' The man was clearly a fool. The red pillar box Chesterton scorned is not only a handsome piece of design, but one of the few remaining symbols of public spiritedness in privatised Britain. We take its reassuring presence for granted. We cannot imagine life without it and there is, increasingly, in a world of faxes and electronic mail, a pleasure to be had from feeding letters through the wide lips of its gaping mouth. For generations, until the car stole away such pedestrian pleasures, a trip to the pillar box with the family mail and the family dog in tow gave British children an early sense of responsibility. In its most familiar cylindrical form the pillar box has stood on our street corners like a guardsman on point duty, splendid in its scarlet uniform, since 1879. This was when the National Standard pillar box was adopted by the Post Office (a design of its own), superseding the hexagonal Penfold box of 1866. Now, the Royal Mail has plans to destroy its proud and enduring design heritage with a grim squad of new pillar boxes shaped to collect bulk mail from business parks and industrial estates. If that is successful, these urchins could be let loose on city streets. As pillar boxes do not require planning permission, the brutal designs might appear anywhere; the fact that many of today's boxes have years of useful life left may not prevent their premature destruction. Jonathon Glancey 1994 Please click on a red dot to see the photographs

bn11 [Sussex Gallery of Modern Art]
Opening times : by arrangement.
Telephone 01903 533 834
East Tower, Beachparade, off Brighton Road, BN11 2ES