Richard Wilson
Slipstream
The story of ‘Slipstream’
Richard Wilson’s twirling, spinning sculpture Slipstream was inspired by the daring antics of stunt planes and air racers. It now hangs in Heathrow’s Terminal 2, about to take flight over the departure bridge. Inspired by films, comic books and even video games, Richard Wilson’s work brings to mind the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, with installations that are constantly on the move – from a coach teetering on top of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill (Hang on a Minute Lads, I’ve Got a Great Idea, 2012) to the revolving façade of a modernist building in Liverpool in 2008 (Turning the Place Over).
Wilson’s most ambitious work Slipstream at Heathrow’s Terminal 2 took three years to design, build and install. Spanning four columns of the terminal, this handmade aluminium 70-metre structure was installed in 2014 to convey the twisting velocity of a stunt plane.
Wilson’s iconic work 2050 has been exhibited around the world since 1987 and is currently being installed in Istanbul for Autumn 2021; it has also found a new permanent home at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania.
The installation consists of an expanse of glossy, recycled engine oil which floods a room and mirrors its architecture when you step out alone onto a metal walkway, it creates the illusion that you are suspended in space.
Wilson’s fascination with all things nautical continues with plans for a new maritime museum to be housed in the reclaimed bow of a supertanker – and for a preview of how this might look, head down to The O2 in Greenwich to discover Wilson’s permanent work A Slice of Reality (2000) a sliced vertical section of a sand dredge appears to float among the city’s’ docklands and waterways and forms part of The Line, London’s first dedicated public art walk.
Wilson often refers back to ‘that beautiful, rather romantic, classical Sixties engineering, postwar – ships, boats, cars – when a lot of sheet metal was used to make very light monocoque [structural skin] structures.’ Film continues to be an important influence on his work, from ‘the end shot in Casablanca, where going up the steps there is this beautiful nose and propeller of the plane’, to the shape of Steve McQueen’s Ford Mustang in Bullit. The aerodynamic design of British Speed Ace Donald Campbell’s jet-powered hydroplane in the 1960s made an impression, too.
