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| Press Release: Anish Kapoor's 'Turning the World Inside Out' at the Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire (14 July - 3 August 2003) Part of Extraordinary Art, a series of installations placing work from UK museum collections in unusual settings, organised by the National Art Collections Fund, in celebration of its centenary year. Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Turning the World Inside Out, (1997) is placed in the centre of a prehistoric stone circle, part of a group of stone monuments, collectively known as the Rollright Stones, erected in the Late Neolithic period - around 3000BC. The work of Anish Kapoor is engaged with polarity and a search for the evocation of the sublime: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place, the solid and the intangible. It is deeply appropriate, then, that this particular piece of work should be installed at a site which has been viewed by many as portal between the physical and spiritual world, for several thousand years. Kapoor uses materials which reflect or absorb light, or allow light to pass through them, which change ones perception of the form of work, which is often ambiguous, being organic, irregular, or anthropomorphic in character. 'Turning the World Inside Out', made of steel, is perfectly smooth and reflective, making its true shape harder to discern. The Rollright Stones, shaped like crouching men, carry with them an ancient myth that they were once human. With their worn, rugged surfaces they are a perfect foil to the smooth steel form of the sculpture. A powerful symbolism, rooted in Indian Hindu mythology, is embodied in the sculpture of Kapoor. The female and male symbols in particular, known as the yoni and lingam, recur throughout the artists oeuvre. 'Turning the World Inside Out' has a predominately female form, being rounded and womb-like in shape,and with a 'vaginal' indentation on the upper side. Hence its placing in the middle of a circle of upright stones has a particular resonance. The stones have been seen as (male) symbols of fertility, with the power to impregnate barren women. Although the sculpture will be encircled, embraced almost, by the stones, the works reflective surface will make this feminine form appear to coolly reject their advances. Hence the installation of the serene and beautiful sculpture in the sacred and historic setting of the Rollright Stones will work on several different levels and will without doubt enrich the viewers experience of both. Reply | with quote |  14th July 2003ce 18:04 3 replies: Re: Art at the Rollrights (nigelswift) Re: Art at the Rollrights (Jane) Re: Arty ~ Farty (Wotan) |
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