Feature: THE BIG PICTURE - Exhibition - Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World at the Hayward Gallery,
Published: 01 July 2010
BRAZILIAN artist Ernesto Neto, whose new instillation The Edges of the World was created specifically for the Hayward Gallery, began his career as a minimalist in the 1980s.
However, it is his giant “biomorphic” structures which earned him worldwide acclaim. He says they are intended to allow people to experience “the feeling of getting inside your own body”.
Flabby, womb-like and pungent from the spices they are sprinkled with, Neto’s works allow for immersion in an alien environment evoking membranes and tissues, organelles and stretched skin. In this instillation, he draws an analogy between the body and a city.
The body, says Neto, is “like a city”, its complex organs akin to architecture.
While the Hayward Gallery’s indoor spaces – with their cavities, protrusions, pendulous sacs and tunnels – have bodily associations, the outdoor works on the gallery’s terraces represent three aspects of a city park: a monument, a garden walkway and a lake.
Incorporating spaces both for contemplation and play, The Edges of the World invites visitors to move freely through and around it; to explore and wonder, to relax and be energised, to think, to dream – and even to swim in the domed sculptural swimming pool (entitled H20-SFLV, shorthand for ‘H20 Solution For Love’), which is flanked by two changing rooms.
Many of the artist’s ideas for The Edges of the World stemmed from the Hayward Gallery’s location in the midst of the metropolis.
Inscribed in relief on a wall is a map of streets and arterial roads – a tangled configuration, underlined by a long, snaking band of wood which provides a counterpoint to the undulating fabric overhead.
The work encapsulates Neto’s impressions of London.
“The whole city is very much like a labyrinth,” he says, “and I always have a feeling that many things are hidden there.”
• Ernesto Neto: The Edges of the World is at the Hayward Gallery, The South Bank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1,
until September 5. Tickets £11 (concs £6.50-£10). 020 7960 4200. Ticket office: 0844 875 0073.
•The pool holds 16 swimmers an hour. Admission is free, but must be booked in advance by telephone on
0844 847 9910. Costumes and towels are not supplied