Photographing Da Cunha's Art Installation at the new Battersea Power Station
I was commissioned by Transport for London / Art on the Underground to photograph Alexandre Da Cunha's colourful kinetic art installation, created for the new Underground station at Battersea Power Station. The 96 metre sculpture is a beautiful display of sunset and sunrise colours, which flow down the concourse. The sculpture is created through the use of rotating prisms, which ripple down the station at random intervals.
Here's the description of the work from TFL: ‘Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset’ is a monumental kinetic sculpture reflecting on daily cycles. Da Cunha uses an outdated advertising mechanism – the rotating billboard – to create two friezes which face each other along the length of the ticket hall. Inspired by the former control room at Battersea Power Station and its system of vertical bars that regulated the production and output of electricity into the city, the works refers to cycles, routine, the everyday and eternity.
Stretching to nearly 100m in length, the friezes consist of three faces of a different colour, gradually fading from one colour to another over the length of the entire image. The colours have been extracted from photos of London sunsets and sunrises. Throughout the course of the day, the panels rotate, presenting different combinations of colours into the ticket hall.
The three words of the title refer to the three faces of the vertical panels, their cyclical rotation and repetition. With over 3,500 individual panels, ‘Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset’ creates an ever-changing environment within the station.
Below are some progress shots, during the build phase of the station and the installation of the artwork
Each prism was hand wrapped with vinyl to create the colourful surfaces
For more information, see the TFL website https://art.tfl.gov.uk/projects/sunset-sunrise-sunset/
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