Birmingham Central Library was built by John Madin and opened by Harold Wilson in 1971. Despite a long-running campaign by Friends of Birmingham Library called ‘Keep the Ziggurat’, supported by the Twentieth Century Society, English Heritage and the World Monuments Fund (who included it in its list of endangered cultural monuments in 2011), the library was demolished in 2015 as part of the Paradise Circus redevelopment.

Katharina Grosse’s spray paint mural in 2003 covered 150 m2 of the library exterior in a luminous field of over 20 iridescent colours – copper, cobalt teal, burnt umber and iridescent orange.

Commissioned by Ikon Gallery and supported by the Abbey Harris Mural Fund.