Posts Categorized: Public Commissions
‘Flight Structure’, Sandra Blow
In 1995 we commissioned ‘Flight Structure’, an illuminated glass screen by Sandra Blow which was installed in Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport by the airside entrance. Blow styled the work to convey the transition from security to flight.
Consideration was given by Blow for the screen to combine harmoniously with its surroundings. The steel bands that were part of the interior were used to flow in a free form across the screen while the verticals met the lines of the ceiling in the departure lounge. The shape and dimensions of ‘Flight Structure’ were determined by the gateway to airside which passengers had to pass through. These architectural references are typical of Blow’s work especially since her collaboration with the architect Eric Defty in the 1970’s, after which her work often included geometric shapes and was further underpinned through her increasing use of square canvasses.
According to the artist herself: ‘Flight Structure is balanced to give the sense of a secure enclosure, whilst the luminous, coloured glass panels lift off into animation and gaiety, rising above the purposefulness of the lounge, and from there, with colours running across the top, taking off into flight.’
This commission being Blow’s only experimentation with glass, forms an important part of the artist’s body of work.
We commissioned ‘Flight Structure’ in 1995 on behalf of Heathrow Terminal 3 as part of the BAA Art Programme. In 2013 we re-located the work to Heathow’s head office in the Compass Centre.
‘Untitled’, David Fusco
David Fusco’s works are distillations from an abundance of slowly organised material, rather than absolute, revealed statements. The pieces are realised as partial sequences, in balanced groups; similes of common experiences composed of objects which are re-manufactures, hybrids and inventions; instruments, tools and containers. They backtrack experience, holding and revealing memory and sensation. The works don’t contain riddles to be unravelled – the pieces are monumental in that their physical presence and formal geometry are assimilated immediately, the detail and internal relationships acting on and confirming the first understanding.
We commissioned ‘Untitled’ as part of the BAA Art Programme in 1996. The works were installed at Heathrow Terminal 1 Airside Office Corridor until 2015.
‘Above and Below Me, All Around Me’, David Hugo
David Hugo’s ‘Above and Below Me, All Around Me’, was a site specific response to the new multi-storey car park for the Cargo Centre Heathrow Airport, the geography of the airport’s signage, flight instrumentation and the reality of the cargo centre as a global distribution hub.
‘The transportation of goods and people through the medium of air and water is reflected in the experience of moving through the environment, the stairwell and so the artwork. The artwork in the stairwell has been designed to offer a variety of different points of view and so different visual and perceptual experiences. The viewer moving through the stairwell can look up, down and all around to experience the work differently each and every time he or she encounters the work’, David Hugo.
We commissioned ‘Above and Below Me, All Around Me’ as part of the BAA Art Programme in 1997.