What is the #Blade?

Conceived by artist Nayan Kulkarni, Blade has been created for Look Up, a programme of temporary artworks created for the city’s public spaces and places.

It uses one of the first B75 rotor blades made in Hull and changes its status to that of a readymade artwork.  At 75 metres it is the world’s largest, handmade fibreglass component – cast as a single element.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The blade is 75 metres long, 3.5m in diameter at the root and weighs 25 tonnes.
• It is the largest single-cast product in the world.
• The blades are a composite of fibreglass, balsa wood and resin.
• This blade is part of a turbine which stands 90 metres tall.
• Over the course of 2017, hundreds of blades will be made in the new Siemens factory in Hull.
• Blade bisects the square from Savile Street to Carr Lane, rising to a height of more than 5.5 metres at its tip, allowing double-decker buses to pass underneath.

Nayan Kulkarni said: “Blade seeks to transform Hull’s streetscape through the imposition of a single wind turbine blade. As with J.G.Ballard’s fictional ‘The Drowned Giant’ or Richard Serra’s ‘Tilted Arc’ this will be a profound material gesture, a spectacle, an obstacle and an object of wonder. This readymade artwork, 75 metres long, will divide the square, forming a temporary impediment to a free flow. Carefully positioned, it will force us to drift around its arabesque edges, our sight taking the place of the breeze. The twisting wing, although inert and at rest in the street, speaks of movement, but not of freedom.”

Blade is the first in a series of major art commissions that will be installed in public spaces around Hull as part of Look Up, a year-long programme for Hull 2017 that will see different artists creating temporary artworks designed to make people look at and experience the city in new ways.

Commissioned by Hull UK City of Culture 2017 in partnership with Siemens and with the support of Green Port Hull.

(Originally post at https://www.hull2017.co.uk/whatson/events/blade/)