Alex Chinneck

A Bullet from a Shooting Star, 2015

Galvanised Steel Height 35 m

Commissioned by Greenwich Peninsula as part of the London Design Festival, A Bullet from a Shooting Star is an ambitious outdoor sculpture by British artist Alex Chinneck (b.1984). The work takes the form of an upside down electricity pylon, balancing on its tip, leaning at a precarious angle as though shot to earth from the sky. At 35 metres tall, the structure is composed of 466 pieces of steel with a combined length of 1,186 metres. Over 1,000 engineered connection points and 25-metre-deep foundations have been used to anchor the 15 tonne structure. Greenwich Peninsula was once home to the largest oil and gas works in Europe and the pylon looks to evoke this industrial history of power generation and supply. The latticed steelwork reflects the visual and material language of multiple structures on the Peninsula, particularly the neighbouring redundant gas tower and the tilting structural elements of the Millennium Dome (The O2). Illuminated at night, the sculpture projects a maze of latticed light.

Courtesy the artist and Greenwich Peninsula

Biography

Alex Chinneck (b.1984, Bedford) studied painting at Chelsea College of Arts (2003-07). Working across the fields of art, architecture and theatre, Chinneck’s public artworks and sculptures playfully disrupt the world around us through their contextually responsive interventions. Renowned for unzipping the facades of buildings, tying knots in pillars and postboxes, as well large-scale installations that defy gravity, his surrealist artworks seek to challenge our understanding of the familiar.

Chinneck’s monumental installations have featured across London and the South East, including Pick Yourself Up and Pull Yourself Together (Southbank Centre, 2015), From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes (Margate, 2013) and Take My Lightning But Don’t Steal My Thunder (Covent Garden, 2014), in which the market building appeared to levitate. He is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and lives and works in Kent.

Images:
1. Chris Tubbs
2. Chris Tubbs
3. SEAM Lighting
4. SEAM Lighting