In 1997, artist Rick Buckley attached 35 plaster-of-paris casts of his own nose to walls around London as a protest against the emerging surveillance state of the 1990s. Each nose was installed in opposition to the proliferation of CCTV cameras at a time when the Home Office was spending about 78 per cent of its crime-prevention budget on the technology.
The Guerrilla Art Project
Buckley placed his sculptures on important public buildings: one appeared outside the National Gallery, another at Tate Britain. He installed them right “under the nose” of the authorities, without publicising the project at all. He painted the casts to match the walls they were fixed to, aiming to see whether he could install his pieces undetected and have them become part of the buildings themselves.
The noses appeared mysteriously — nobody knew who was behind them until 2011, when The Standard revealed the artist. Many were immediately removed, possibly stolen, or perhaps discovered by authorities who failed to see the funny side. Today, seven noses reportedly remain: five in Soho, from D’Arblay Street to Bateman Street, and two outside Soho — on Endell Street in Covent Garden and within Admiralty Arch.
Buckley’s Inspiration and Motivation
In 2012, Buckley, from Hackney, explained his work to The Standard: “At the time there was this debate about the number of CCTV cameras. A lot of people took offence to it. They saw it as an infringement of their liberty. I was reading about the Situationists. They were artists and writers who did these sporadic, illegal actions. I guess you would call it performance art today. That inspired me as well. I wanted to see if I could get away with it without being detected. The afterthought was that it would be great if these protrusions would become part of the structure themselves.”
Almost 30 years later, much of the curiosity has been lost, but the noses remain a point of analogue, architectural eccentricity in a city shaped more by AI and self-driving cars than whimsical takes on broad topics. The noses now exist mostly unnoticed: London is busy and frenetic, and who has time to stop and look up?
Myths and Legends
Stories about the artworks live on. One of the final seven is not a Buckley nose, for example. A legend suggests that if anybody finds all seven, they will become roaringly wealthy. Another story states that architects used to “stamp” their buildings with a cast of their noses, a sort of nostril-led signature to signify expertise.
For a long while, speculative types suggested the nose close to Trafalgar Square was a replica of Napoleon’s snout for passing cavalrymen to tweak. Another rumour states the schnoz is a replica of Admiral Lord Nelson’s — a gentleman famous for possessing a notably large one — acting as a potential replacement were his own to be damaged while he was raised to the top of his column. Sadly untrue, of course, though who’s to say the nose won’t one day be put to practical use? Nelson’s column was erected in 1843 and must be suffering wear and tear.
The Noses Today
In my own experience, I’m not convinced there are seven noses left — I think one or two have gone missing, removed by some drunk fool or an enterprising plastic surgeon. Buckley boasts a pleasing nose: it’s neither too big, nor too small; it has a little ridge, the sort that elevates a face rather than takes it over.
Beyond speculation, the noses have lost much of their early significance. Buckley’s nasal-based intervention was largely ineffective. Besides previous governmental attempts to introduce ID cards, there hasn’t been much mainstream rebuttal when it comes to CCTV. As a society, public privacy was lost years ago, and cameras in streets are the least of our worries today. If anything, people are more eager than ever to tell the world where they are and what they’re doing.
The noses are worth sniffing out regardless. The body part has a powerful idiomatic role in Britain, one that holds weight, and if nothing else, the collection stands as a wonderfully weird gallery, free to peruse between pints. Does it matter if they mean nothing at all? Well, who nose?
