Twist. Credit Ackroyd & Harvey and Insite Arts
Synopsis
Cabot Circus is a shopping centre adjacent to Broadmead shopping district which opened in September 2008, after a ten-year planning and building project costing £500 million. The Cabot Circus development contains shops, offices, a cinema, hotel and 250 apartments and covers a total of 139,350 m2 (1,500,000 sq. ft.) of floor space. As part of the development London based art consultants InSite Arts were commissioned to develop a permanent and temporary public art commissions programme which included ‘Twist’ by Ackroyd & Harvey.
Description
Twist is a permanent landmark sculpture that opened in December 2008. Visible on entry into Bristol from the M32, the 20-metre high tower is clad in an intensive layering of thin dark grey slates – a waste material from the roofing industry – and is lit using power generated from a combination of solar energy and wind power.
The artwork is complimented by a landscape scheme by New Leaf Landscape Architects for the traffic enclosed green space on which the sculpture stands.
Ackroyd & Harvey
Sculpture, photography, architecture and ecology are some of the disciplines that intersect in the work of Ackroyd and Harvey. Nature and structure, control and randomness are juxtaposed in their work to reveal a time-based practice with intrinsic bias towards process and event. They are acclaimed for their work with the light sensitivity of seedling grass and its ability to record complex photographic images, and have exhibited in galleries, museums and sites worldwide, articulating the seductions of time and visibility inherent in the transient organic image.
In 2007 they realised FlyTower on the exterior of London’s National Theatre, whereby they grew the entire north and west face of the landmark Lyttelton flytower with seedling grass. In 2003 they grew the entire interior wall space of a deconsecrated and disused concrete church in south London (Dilston Grove).
Twist, a permanent landmark sculpture opened in December 2008. Visible on entry into Bristol from the M32, the 20-metre high tower is clad in an intensive layering of thin dark grey slates – a waste material from the roofing industry – and is lit using power generated from a combination of solar energy and wind power. Over the last few years they have made a series of expeditions to the High Arctic with Cape Farewell, looking at the effects of global warming on the ecosystem.
Ackroyd and Harvey have been recipients of numerous awards including two RSA Art For Architecture awards, Wellcome Sci-Art, NESTA Pioneering Award and the L’Oreal Art & Science of Colour Grand Prize. Selected solo/group exhibitions include Mostra SESC Des Artes, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2008); Bios 4, Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (2008); Japan’s Miraikan Museum (2008); FlyTower, National Theatre London (2007), Big Chill UK(2007), Liverpool Art Biennale (2006), Natural History Museum, London (2006), World Expo, Aichi, Japan (2005), Sculpture Quadrennial, Riga (2004), Musee de’ L’Elysee, Lausanne (2004), Dilston Grove, London (2003), Chicago Public Art Program (2003), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2001), Beaconsfield, London (2000), V&A Museum, London (2000).
