Olafur Eliasson to Create 98-Foot-Long Artwork Mirroring Sea and Sky for UK Coastline


Artnews_ Olafur Eliasson, the artist behind expansive installations that often evoke meteorological conditions, will soon stage yet another outsize work.

For a location on the coastline of Silecroft, England, Eliasson will create Your Daylight Destination, an installation that will mirror the sky when the tide is low. The project will be staged in collaboration with writer Robbie Macfarlane, who has previously worked with Eliasson; the piece is commissioned by the Copeland Borough Council.

The council had previously held a competition for the commission, with artists like Rachel Whiteread and Roger Hiorns among those up for consideration.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to realise this contemplative artwork for Copeland,” Eliasson said in a statement. “In a sense, it 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.”

The council described Eliasson’s project as a 98-foot-long steel basin set into the beach that acts as an “elongated pool.” When the tide is high, it will conceal the basin, but as the ocean recedes, the vessel will fill with water that reflects the sky above. That skyscape will be viewable from a platform designed to enable visitors to look into this mirror of a sort.

The work is likely to be widely seen, since other Eliasson pieces in the UK have attracted crowds. A reported 2 million people visited his 2003 piece, The Weather Project, for which the artist created an installation of mist and a luminous sun inside Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

Mike Starkie, the mayor of Copeland, suggested as much when he said in a statement that “the piece will also be a driver for tourism—I am sure people will come here to experience our coast in this unique way, and also discover the delights of this ‘secret’ corner of the county. The hope is that local businesses will see a boost from this attraction, and all the other investment we’ve delivered as part of the Connecting Cumbria’s Hidden Coast project.”