Thursday, March 04, 2010

Behind the curtain

Mad magazine often runs a gag that makes heroes of the unheralded people behind great events: the photographer who had to get to the top of Everest first to capture the climbers knocking the bastard off - that sort of thing. 

In the art world these hidden heroes are the fabricators –the sign writers and the cabinetmakers - the unartists who make art works. Knowing OTN this may well be the start of a series, but to kick off let’s hear it for Structurflex Ltd who operate out of Henderson in Auckland. 

Starting off as sail makers 75 years ago, the company now has offices round the world and focuses on handling specialised fabric materials. It was Structurflex Alan Gibbs and Anish Kapoor called when they wanted to construct a massive outdoor work on Gibbs’s sculpture park The Farm north of Auckland. For the record, Structurflex used 7,250 kilos of Ferrari 1302-S series PVC fabric spanning 85 meters supported by two steel ellipses each weighing 43,000 kilos.

Image: Anish Kapoor's untitled work on The Farm