Inspired by the site’s heritage, this artwork echoes the form of brewers’ vats and uses the wind to reflect the perpetual motion of brewing.
Artist: Jennifer Turpin, Michaelie Crawford
Artwork description
Halo stands at the heart of the Central Park public plaza in Chippendale, between the iconic heritage buildings of the old Kent Street Brewery and modern residential precincts.
Halo is a kinetic sculpture that consists of a tapered yellow ring balanced on a silver arm from a tall, tilted silver mast.
The ring, made of carbon fibre, appears weightless despite its size. It is perfectly balanced and rests on a single ceramic bearing.
Halo is designed to interact with nature, rotating slowly in a gentle breeze, or rapidly tilting, spinning and rolling during more vigorous winds.
The structure has an in-built dampening safety mechanism which brakes the movement during extreme weather. The sculpture was inspired by the site’s brewing heritage, with the form representing the giant circular structures that held the brewing vats, and the fluid circular motion of the ring echoing the constant stirring of beer during brewing.
Halo was commissioned by Central Park developers Frasers Property Australia and Sekisui House Australia, and delivered by Partridge Event Engineering.
Artists
Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford are award-winning artists whose work focuses on the design and production of site-specific kinetic artworks in the public domain.
Their practice is based in Sydney, where they have more than 30 years experience at the interface of art, science, nature and the built environment.
Turpin and Crawford’s works explore the rhythms of environmentally reactive movement and seek to heighten their audience’s awareness of being in time and in space.
Inscription
Turning and tilting with the energy of the wind, Halo hovers in finely tuned counterbalance.
The 12m-diameter carbon fibre ring pivots off-centre atop a 13m high tilted mast. The entire weight of the ring and arm balances on a ceramic bearing the size of a small marble.
Halo responds to the winds of the moment. Gentle breezes set its eccentric rotation in motion, whilst gusts and eddies tip it off the horizontal to pitch and roll.
As much an invention as an artwork, Halo’s encircling undulations are born of a marriage between art, science and engineering.
The 12m-diameter carbon fibre ring pivots off-centre atop a 13m high tilted mast. The entire weight of the ring and arm balances on a ceramic bearing the size of a small marble.
Halo responds to the winds of the moment. Gentle breezes set its eccentric rotation in motion, whilst gusts and eddies tip it off the horizontal to pitch and roll.
As much an invention as an artwork, Halo’s encircling undulations are born of a marriage between art, science and engineering.
