Column 2012

Column, Anthony McCall's major public realm project on Wirral Waters in Liverpool, now has its own website where you can find out more about the project: www.column2012.com

Column forms part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and was funded through the Artists Taking the Lead project. 

According to the site the project is due to commence at the end of August 2012 and will be in situ for a year, coinciding with Liverpool's Biennial which opens in mid-September.

The artwork consists of a 'spinning column of cloud that will rise from the surface of East Float, Merseyside. Seen from a distance, ‘Column’ is, essentially, a vertical line drawn in the sky; seen closer up, it is a hollow tube of spinning cloud with a diameter of about twenty metres..... it will disappear and reappear; and what it looks like will shift from hour to hour in response to the changes in the winds, the humidity, the temperature and the position of the sun.'  

Since his earliest work in the seventies, Anthony McCall has worked with mist, projection and light. Although different in scale from his indoor, projected light installations, the artist sees ‘Column’ as being closely related to them:
'The solid light works are shaped columns of light that gain their visibility from being projected through ambient mist. ‘Column’ is the inverse of this; a shaped column of mist that gains its visibility from being projected through ambient light.'