The sunshine roof 1934

Curator: The artwork before us, created by Cyril Power in 1934, is a linocut print titled "The Sunshine Roof." Editor: My first impression is how disorienting yet familiar the composition is, the curving lines make me feel like I am inside the belly of some kind of green metallic creature. Curator: That's quite evocative. Power was fascinated with urban movement and technology. This image, made using linocut—a relatively accessible and mass-producible medium—captures the experience of riding a bus. The emphasis on geometry speaks to the prevailing artistic and architectural trends of the Art Deco movement. The interplay of green, brown, and white speaks to a mechanised natural landscape. Editor: It's interesting that you say that, as the interior is dominated by passengers that are only hinted at beneath a mandatory hat or above a high-collared coat, it reminds me of uniformity. The sunshine, though it might exist outside of the frame and beyond those streaking windows, isn't really accessible to these figures in any meaningful way, trapped inside of what seems to be another mode of labour. Curator: Power and his contemporaries were deeply engaged with depicting modern life and the impact of machines on labor. Notice how the strong, deliberate lines created by the linocut process mimic the structure of the vehicle. Power even plays with the modernist fascination with machinery to show a new way of life in transit with industrial progress, which democratises experience. Editor: I can appreciate the modernist lens, but there is something incredibly human still rooted here, I read into it both our constant ability to conform and willingness to submit. It is a time capsule not just of the vehicle itself, but how our modernised ability to traverse even impacted society itself. Curator: Your perspective highlights an important facet: the shared experience, the social contract enacted within this steel shell, as people shared new modes of travel together. Editor: Precisely. So the material constraints, combined with this very modern vision of travel, tell a profound tale of social change and how daily lives shifted with industrial progress. Curator: It has indeed prompted us to think about the multiple layers embedded in "The Sunshine Roof," extending from its physical creation to its layered depiction of metropolitan existence and beyond.