Composed of a vast PVC membrane stretched between the two giant steel ellipses, Kapoor’s work is architectural, and yet it also has a fleshy quality which the artist describes as being “rather like a flayed skin”. The fleshy dark red membrane that this work shares with two earlier temporary works commissioned for the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (refers to Joan of Arc).
Kapoor has commented, “I want to make body into sky”. At the farm he achieves this. Here, the artist had to devise a form that was both freestanding and capable of surviving a constant arm-wrestle with the sky and the mercurial weather conditions.
Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Born in Bombay in 1954, he moved to Britain in 1972 and studied at the Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design; and he has lived and worked in London since the early 1970's. Over the past twenty years his work has been seen in most of the leading galleries and museums, including Kunsthalle Basel,
Basel; the Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London; Reina Sofia, Madrid; Haus der Kunst, Munich; the Whitechapel Art Gallery and The Royal Academy, London, and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1990 Kapoor was awarded the “Premio Duemila” when he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art; in 1991 he won the Turner Prize; in 1997 he was
awarded an Honorary Doctorate at the London Institute; in 2001 was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at Royal Institute of British Architecture; and in 2003 he received a CBE.
www.anishkapoor.com