Taratantara, Anish Kapoor
In the 3 month gap between demolition of the Baltic Flour Mills core innards and the construction of the new BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts - Anish Kapoor was invited to create an installation to promote the new gallery. A membrane sculpture was created filling the 50m long space. The stability for the surface being taken from it’s three dimensional form and supported though the end walls (filling the large openings) into the stiff exoskeleton.
The same membrane sculpture was later erected in a public square in Naples – using scaffolding as support.
Artist: Anish Kapoor, Client: Gateshead City Council, Completed: 1999
Photograph ©John Riddy, Courtesy of Lisson Gallery
Sharing from AnishKapoor.com
Tarantara, Baltic - the set up.
'I wanted to turn the building inside out. The engineer Neil Thomas and I came up with a membrane form with a geometry which changes from rectangular to circular. Because of the way the form narrows, there is foreshortening of the space. The end, which is about 15 metres by 40 metres, tapers to a circular tube of 8 metres in diameter. The building from the outside appears to be half as long as it really is. Entering the interior is like going to the Grand Canyon. The space expands. There is a sense of the outside being smaller than the inside. Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Piazza Plebicito, Naples, Italy.'
Text taken from - http://anishkapoor.com/323/Taratantara.html