Abstract

Jump on the Reuters Steps by Lothar Götz, 2022
This work is intended to celebrate movement – responding both to the curving rise of the steps and to the idea of the progression and achievements of gay rights in the context of the LGBTQ+ Pride in London festival.
It also represents the jumps that LGBTQ+ people still have to make in their own lives – of coming out or of jumping over the ongoing hurdles of recognition, equality and acceptance in many environments and social situations.

The colours are those of the Progress Pride Rainbow flag arranged in a series of triangles – which includes the pink triangle that references the oppression and badges that gay people had to wear in Nazi concentration camps. These are stretched across the two rising flights of steps interspersed with circles that pick up on the curve of the double set of steps – which read like fragments of the radius of a huge circle. The circles can be seen almost as a series of dance steps that jump across and up and down the steps.

I see the sets of steps like two grand stairs leading up to a ballroom – like the stairs on which Cinderella ran down from the ball and on which she lost her glass slipper, with the coloured shapes akin to the pattern on a technicolour version of a red carpet.

In between the two steps , along the glass panel of the balustrading, translucent vinyl panels are arranged in coloured rays, emanating out from the centre, like disco lights fanning out across the dance floor.