Anish Kapoor Olympic sculpture captured in new time-lapse footage

New time-lapse footage released last week by the Olympic Park Legacy Company shows the construction of the spiralling ArcelorMittal Orbit in east London's Olympic Park, which when completed will be become the tallest sculpture in the UK at 114.5 metres.

Download footage of the Orbit being constructed (MP4)

The Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond-designed ArcelorMittal Orbit will be owned by the OPLC, which is currently appointing an operator for the venue. Organisers say the attraction could reap up to £10 million each year, with a large proportion being ploughed back into regeneration of the area.

A spokesman for the OPLC said that there was no "finite lifespan" for the body, but that whatever happens, the Orbit would remain in public hands.

The Olympic Delivery Authority backed plans for the sculpture last August after taking into account concerns by the Government’s design watchdog, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe).

Pop(-up) Art

Regeneration photographer Len Grant is busy working on his latest project - a collection of photos of people from around Manchester, with poems written alongside them by US poet Linda Chase, a tutor at the Poetry School in Manchester.

Grant's last project was Billy and Rolonde, a book featuring portraits of socially excluded individuals in Manchester, which we reviewed in April. Before this, he compiled images tracking the regeneration of east Manchester, in Reclaiming East Manchester - reviewed in the same month. His latest project, Shooting the Breeze, is scheduled to be completed in time for the Didsbury Arts Festival in October. It entails him - along with Chase - driving round to various Manchester neighbourhoods and setting up a "pop-up studio". There, Grant and Chase stop passers-by, who pose in front of the "studio" - little more than a white backdrop - and tell the two artists a little about their life story. Grant takes a portrait of the passers-by; Chase writes a poem inspired by them.

Grant said: "I've always fancied driving round Manchester and just putting up my equipment wherever I feel like it and capturing people as they go about their daily life. Once people understood exactly why there appeared to be a huge piece of white tarpaulin in the middle of their street, they were really keen to get involved and I sensed a lot of pride in them that we'd taken an interest in them and where they lived."

He added that the locations of the shots were not of huge importance. But can it be a coincidence that for this project - what is essentially a social project - he picked deprived neighbourhoods, including housing estates in Cheetham Hill, Wythenshawe and Gorton - where a New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration partnership has been operating for the past ten years.

The text of one of Chase's poems from the project is below.

Man and Son
Gabriel with Caiden

Gabriel is a man of names
who loves his only son.

He has Dad and Cameron
curled around a gun

and Logan lettered
right above his heart

as Calvin Klein enpouches
every private part.

But his son Caiden
is label free, anonymous

though there’s no doubt who’s
precious son he is.

Long live tattoos, bare chests
and this fine dad--

he might be the coolest
any kid has ever had.

Net gain: the role of public art in regeneration

Has Ray "Robocop" Mallon gone soft?

Speaking at the unveiling last week of Anish Kapoor's and Cecil Balmond's vuvuzela-shaped Temenos sculpture, the Middlesbrough mayor, whose zero tolerance policy has had some success in reducing crime, said such public artworks were about nothing more complicated than "making people feel good".

"Flowers make people smile," he said. "So do pieces of art."

Later on, Kapoor - who has also designed a proposed Olympic Park sculpture, was also enthusiastic about the role of public art doing public good.

"Quality is everything, but on the whole public art works seem to function amazingly effectively, and there are lots and lots of examples, from the so-called Bilbao Effect, to spaces like the Rockefeller Center in New York or the Millenium Park in Chicago and the Tate Modern in London ..." he said.

"Public art does something to our sense of what we are, who we are, why we are - and those things are not without effect. They bring a sense of belonging and place."

Kapoor also said he'd been told that land values in the Middlehaven regeneration site have gone up by 30 per cent in the last five years, partly as a result of the sculpture. (Listen to the Audioboo with Kapoor here.)

Temenos already seems to belong at Middlehaven Dock. Though longer than a Boeing 747 and taller than Nelson's Column - it makes the Angel of the North look piddly - it complements, rather than dominates, the busy industrial landscape it inhabits. (Don't take my word for it - listen to the views of an expert.) Its scale is not overbearing, the sculpture's net of stainless steel cables seemingly shifting in the winds like the smoke stacks rising from the cooling towers behind it.

It is a fitting advertisement for Mallon and Kapoor's view of the regenerating role of public art.

What is art?

London mayor Boris Johnson is reportedly backing a public arts experiment that would see 31 pianos placed around the capital in a bid to encourage people to gather for a singsong with strangers.

As part of the Sing London festival, pianos will be placed at prominent sites including the British Library, the Natural History Museum and Tate Britain. The pianos will be chained to bollards and railings, with members of the public trusted not to vandalise them. A full-time tuner will tour the sites on a bicycle in order to maintain them. Here's a map showing where the pianos will be:

View Street Piano Locations in a larger map

So is the idea completely mad, or inspired? We probably won't know until the pianos appear on London's streets on 23 June.

The project is the latest in a series of public participation arts events to be staged over recent years. Here, we bring you a selection of five of the most eye-catching displays...

1. Event Horizon, London (2007)

This project, by Angel of the North sculptor Antony Gormley saw 31 life-size castes of the artist himself installed on streets and rooftops around London's South Bank.

2. Go Superlambananas, Liverpool (2008)

125 part-lamb-part-banana fibreglass sculptures were installed around Liverpool last year. The sculptures, created by artists and communities from around the city, were based on Liverpool's iconic Superlambanana sculpture by Japanese-based artist Taro Chiezo.

3. Spencer Tunick installation, Gateshead (2005)

New York-based artist Spencer Tunick convinced 1,700 men and women to strip off for his first large-scale UK arts installation in July 2005. At the time, Gateshead's Baltic Centre said the work would show "the poetic whole resulting from individual bodies arranged in a sculptural way in an urban setting", whatever that means.

4. Cow Parade, Edinburgh (2006)

Around 100 fibreglass cows decorated by local artists went on display in the Scottish capital in 2006. An international franchise, the Cow Parade has also been staged in a number of other major cities, including Rio de Janeiro and Chicago.

5. United Buddy Bears, Stuttgart (2008)

Stuttgart hosted the United Buddy Bears exhibition last summer. Featuring - you've guessed it - fibreglass replicas of bears, the United Buddy Bears exhibition has been staged on "all five continents", according to its website. Stuttgart officials said the event attracted 500,000 visitors to the city.