A new public work of art that involves tearing a building façade in two was unveiled this week on the Fulham Palace Road in London. The piece by the UK artist Alex Chinneck, titled Six pins and half a dozen needles (2017), adorns the new mixed-use development, Assembly London, in the west of the capital.
The piece, Chinneck’s first permanent work, stands 20 metres above ground level, weighs ten tons and is constructed from 4,000 bricks and 1,000 stainless steel components. The installation was commissioned by the asset investment company, AXA Investment Managers-Real Assets.
“Although we use real brick, it was designed with a cartoon-like quality to give the sculpture an endearing artifice and playful personality,” Chinneck says in a statement. The artist is known for his quirky creations such as From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of My Toes (2013), which shows a house façade in Margate falling away from the building.
Last winter, he made waves with his festive sculpture—Fighting Fire with Ice Cream—on display in Granary Square in King’s Cross, London. The seven-metre tall installation comprised a Christmas tree encased inside a vast block of resin, resembling a mammoth block of ice.
He describes his next work as “a trail of four sculptures with a combined height of 163-metres that will be constructed from over 100,000 bricks.” Chinneck is a trustee of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.