Steve Messam’s giant inflatable sculpture reimagines everyday environment – Huge
From the foamy bulges of London’s iconic old Billingsgate Arch to the 15-meter-high red droplets frozen in the heart of Aberdeen’s abandoned swimming pool, Steve Messam explores scale, form, and our experience of the built environment in a massive facility.
Messam is known for his massive inflatable work that reinterprets architecture and explores the impact of humanity on the landscape. Usually, he fills holes such as arcades or underground passages with balloons and rolling forms, attracting attention to the structural form while viewing its basic function as a place to enter or move.
In “Accommodation: Occupy”, Messam delves into the history of British 19th-century infrastructure in Britain by exploring what are called accommodation and occupation bridges, a wide cross designed for rural areas to provide tunnels for rural areas so that farmers can still access the land at the other end of the track. Some of these historic bridges still exist, usually on private lands, such as two in Durham County on the former route of Stockton and Durlington Railroad.
For “below” under a bridge in Tianfu Art Park, Chengdu, China, the purpose of the site as a passage is preserved by creating two symmetrical forms that gap between them, and people can get stuck in installing their own devices.
Whether it’s popcorn, spikes, bubbles or cascades, Messam’s playful interventions have prompted us to catch the attention. Explore more on the artist’s website and on Instagram.
