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Wednesday
8 September, 2010 |
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Willie Nelson | |
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 Veteran country music singer Willie Nelson is always up to something new. Read our Willie Watch column to keep up.
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Culture & History |
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Groping in a Fog
• Disorienting new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery
 Images |
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 On the Web |
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By
Lady J, contrbuting editor
Friday,
1 June, 2007
Sculptor Antony Gormley, designer of the giant sculpture Angel of the North, in Gateshead, is also famous for making casts of own body.
As part of his new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, 27 life casts of the artist have been sited on top of buildings around London and on Waterloo Bridge in an exhibit called "Event Horizon".
In the gallery itself there are more life casts but the chief interest for visitors will be in two new works: "Blind Light" and "Space Station".
"Blind Light" consists of a large semi-transparent glass chamber lit by fluorescent light and filled with thick clouds of steam. On entering, the visitor is instantly enveloped in a soft, grey fog, an opaque sea mist which renders visibility impossible.
Those visitors who don’t immediately leave in the panic induced by being submerged in a dense fog, can explore the space and the periodic revelation of the bodies of other visitors emerging from the fog.
The exhibit is equally effective when viewed from the outside. Viewers can watch the ghostly silhouettes of those inside the chamber, pressed flat against the glass as they grope unsighted for an exit, like flies trapped against glass.
But if you want to be really frightened, then look no further than the first gallery of the Hayward exhibition.
"Space Station" fills a large gallery with almost 30 tons of black Corten steel plates, each of which is pierced by rectangular holes, The whole monstrous construction rests on only three points of contact with the floor, its looming presence that looks like a whole city tilted on its side.
Among those brave enough to venture inside "Space Station", Telegraph art critic Richard Dorment described the experience as terrifying: “if you look up towards the ceiling, you experience a terrible sense of vertigo, as if you are falling down, even while you are looking up.”
There are other disorienting exhibits as well, what appears to be a mirrored gallery, the shards of light are in fact faceted silver rods protruding from holes in the walls and ceilings. A series of stainless-steel hanging sculptures "Matrices and Expansions" resemble abstract drawings of geometric shapes suspended in space, until you see that embedded in some are the outlines of human figures.
The show opens on Thursday 17th May at the Hayward Gallery in London. Tickets: 0871 663 2500
The Naked Reader 2007
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