Olafur Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist, will make his first permanent outdoor piece in the UK. It will be a steel basin filled with sea water, and it will be on the coast of West Cumbria in north-west England. Eliasson's project, which is called Your Daylight Destination for now, was made with the help of the author Robert Macfarlane. The new work by Eliasson is part of a big new public art project called Deep Time: Commissions for the Lake District Coast, which starts this summer. Copeland Borough Council is in charge of the Deep Time project, which is paid for by the UK government's Coastal Communities Fund, Arts Council England, and the nuclear waste management company Sellafield's "Six: Social Impact, Multiplied" program, which is a £2.2 million government-led fund for revitalization. Rachel Whiteread, who won the Turner Prize, Roger Hiorns, who worked with architect Tom Emerson, and Piet Oudolf, a Dutch designer, were all up against Eliasson. Clare Lilley, who runs Yorkshire Sculpture Park, was one of the judges.
Eliasson wants to make an elliptical steel basin that will fill with sea water twice a day when the tide comes in. A project statement says, "The design is proposed for a site near Silecroft in southern Copeland. It uses the beach as a stage for a large piece of art that uses the daily tides, sea water, and light." Visitors will be able to see the steel pool, which will go out into the mud flats, from a platform made up of a series of rings on stands. The rings, which were based on ancient rock art found in Cumbria, make a circle around the pool. "The resulting pool acts like a mirror, reflecting the sun, moon, and sky on its surface," the statement says. "It's a 'borrowed' view of the sky in the sand." Eliasson said in a statement, "[The work] is a humble reflection of what is already there—the beach, the water, the sky, the plants and animals—reframed within a space that invites self-discovery in a deep-time perspective." Other small-scale works by Marcus Coates, Susan Philipsz, Martin Boyce, Atelier Van Lieshout, Yelena Popova, and Ryan Gander that were commissioned will be shown at coastal locations as part of the Deep Time project. Philipsz will make a new piece for Whitehaven Harbour, which has one of the oldest coal wharves still standing in the country. Boyce will make a permanent piece for Silecroft Beach. The show also has five new commissions for writers, including one from Himali Singh Soin.
Selena Mattei