Tall Tree and the Eye
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By Cherry ParkNickel Magazine, December 2009 -- Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel sculpture Tall Tree and the Eye, now on display in London’s Royal Academy of Arts, is fast becoming one of the most photographed and talked-about installations in the U.K., following on from two other of his stainless steel sculptures, Cloud Gate in Chicago and Sky Mirror in the Rockefeller Centre in New York. Tall Tree is part of a larger exhibit of Kapoor’s work, though it takes pride of place, towering over the classical Palladian buildings surrounding the Annenberg Courtyard at the front and reflecting them in the convex surfaces of each of the structure’s gleaming stainless steel spheres. The sculpture engages everyone who sees it. Indeed, no visitor enters the exhibition without first stopping, looking up and marvelling at the myriad, endless, shifting and disorientating reflected images of the splendid buildings (and of themselves with their cameras). Tall Tree and the Eye, which has been likened both to the weightless bubbles in a bottle of champagne and the structure of DNA, stands more than 14 metres high and consists of 73 spheres, each of which weighs 45 kg and measures 1000 millimetres in diameter. The spheres are made of type 316 (S31600) nickel-containing stainless steel, manufactured and mirror- polished by Global Stainless Ltd. of Hawera, New Zealand. The company, which specialises in double-curve forming stainless, won the commission over competing sphere manufacturers worldwide. “The choice of nickel austenitic stainless steels was based on their excellent stretch-forming properties,” says Lincoln Raikes, managing director of Global Stainless. “Type 316 was chosen for the spheres in part because of its molybdenum content which gives increased corrosion resistance. The work hardening that occurs in these grades not only aids in their forming, but increases the strength of the formed components. The strength of the 2 millimetre thick sheet in the sphere is considerably higher than what it was initially. However, it does make it very tricky to do any minor changes to them afterwards”, he states. The process used to form the spheres in Tall Tree and the Eye is unique in that there is no weld shrinkage in the joining seams, so the spheres can be polished to a high standard. “Mirror polishing will highlight any underlying faults in the fabrication, but our special fabrication process allows us to polish to achieve a virtually perfect shining ball,” notes Raikes, adding that the process remains a closely guarded secret. Photos: Cherry Park & Stuart Lumsden, Global Stainless
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