David Breuer-Weil’s Visitor to the ponds is a sign of alien life

Anyone who spots the head in the pond at Golders Hill Park may be forgiven for thinking of the 1951 sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Hampstead Garden Suburb artist David Breuer-Weil admits to being partially inspired by the concept of aliens and large, mysterious bodies with his sculptural work of a half-head.

“I am very interested in the whole science fiction thing. I’m currently doing a lot of paintings of planets.

“It seems very obvious to me that there’s life out there on other planets. There are billions of planets, so it seems probable. I’m very interested in that idea.”

But the concept of an alien body, 46-year-old Breuer-Weil says, has roots on this planet too. “My grandfather was an immigrant from Vienna fleeing the Nazis. He was called an enemy alien. I’m very interested in aliens that are not extra- terrestrials.”

Visitor I, the bronze half-head on legs up on the Heath, will stay for six months. It is one of a few sculptural commissions of the artist that are popping up all over London, including Emergence, which appears in Hanover Square, Mayfair, and Alien, which will be at Leicester Square later in the year.

Breuer-Weil thinks that the water provides the perfect setting for the piece. “The reflections are more important really. They give the impression that the figure is ethereal in some ways. Even though there is half a head there, the brain makes the rest of the figure up with the help of the reflections.

“Really in truth we are all visitors to this planet and we all have a leaving date. I’m hoping the large reflections that are cast on the water get people thinking about their lives and the fact that we are all visitors.”

Visitor I has been a project that the artist has wanted to realise since he first did sketches and models of it aged 15. “When I was a kid, me and my brother used to play a game that we put our eyes above and below water. I was inspired by that, I think, to create the half-emerged figure.

“I wanted to create this island of humanity, a body deep in thought.”

Visitor I will be in Golders Hill Park pond until December.