24 Hour Museum - official guide to UK museums, galleries, exhibitions and heritage
Gateway to Over 3,000 UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions
Skip to navigation
Exhibitions
A Giant Flying Steamroller Takes Up Residence At Chelsea Art College
By 24 Hour Museum Editor, Jon Pratty
02/10/2006
© Jon Pratty/24 Hour Museum
It's 48 tons, it's bright yellow and it flies through the air in a circle with a man driving it with his arms crossed. What is it? Well, in fact it's a flying steamroller, now entertaining passers-by outside Chelsea College of Art next to Tate Britain in London.
The 48 ton avian steamroller was dreamed up as a piece of performance art by veteran American performance artist Chris Burden.
South London Gallery - just down the road across the Thames took on the massive challenge of bringing Burden's steamroller work to the UK. They've presently got a major show of new work (at the gallery until November 5, 2006) by the American artist - who made his name in the 70's with some challenging and sometimes dangerous performance work which usually involved his own body.
Image: a photograph of a yellow steamroller suspended on a large metal pivot
© Jon Pratty/24 Hour Museum
First impressions of the flying steamroller setup are puzzling. It's all set up in a square adjacent to the College, across the road from Tate. There's a central steel mast, with a giant cross member upon which balances, at one end, big concrete blocks, and at the other the steamrolloer is suspended.
The ground is covered by a circle of gravel, with a concentric circle trackway worked into into it. The steamroller, which has a kind of veteran look to it, looks clean and new, objectified, not like a real machine somehow.
Every half hour during the day, warnings sound, and a man in a boiler suit walks across to the roller, mounts up, and he starts the engine. He is expressionless, moving almost like a robot. Once the engine starts, the machine starts to drive noisily round and round the central pillar, still on the ground.
Image: a photograph of a yellow steamroller suspended on a large metal pivot
© Jon Pratty/24 Hour Museum
After a few revolutions, there's a wierd moment of expectation as the central steel arm moves upwards, powered by a hydraulic jack at it's centre. Then slowly, quite gracefully, the roller swings upwards as it revolves, your eye caught too by the driver, who now stands back on his platform, folding his arms, still unmoved by the experience.
And then you see the whole extraordinary spectacle as Burden dreamed it - a snorting, noisy, really heavy, 48 ton road roller flying round and round, tethered to a steel support.
"We might see a road roller everytime we go on a motorway, but here Burden's taken it into a different context," explained Margot Heller, Director of The South London Gallery.
"Here it's presented out of it's normal surroundings, and it brings to mind - apart from the feelings you get of how heavy and dangerous it looks - questions about the physicality of stuff. Look at that skyscraper across the river. How did they get that material up there to the top of the building when they were building it? What challenges did they meet? And, apart from all that, there's even a sort of Dumbo feeling when the roller is flying round and round!"
It makes for a bizarre, exciting and slightly unnerving sight. Originally seen first in Europe in 1999, Heller and the South London Gallery team took on a big challenge getting the performance sculpture to Britian and erected in this genteel square. It's a really involving and thought provoking visual and aural experience.
Staged outside of a gallery space for the first time, the Steam Roller is an off-site addition to Burden's current exhibition at the SLG, 14 Magnolia Double Lamps, consisting of fourteen 1920s cast iron lamp posts from Los Angeles, showing at the until November 5 2006.
South London Gallery
65 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UH, England
T: 020 7703 6120
Open: Tues-Sun 12.00-18.00. Until 20.30 on Thurs
Closed: Monday
Related Articles
South London Gallery Helps Residents With Pedal Power Protest
It's Playtime Until September At South London Gallery
News In Brief- Week Ending September 3 2006
Mary Rose To Frida Kahlo - 2005 According To 24 Hour Museum
Surrounded By Sound - Have A Listen To Her Noise At The South London Gallery
Her Noise Invites Public To Make Music With Kim Gordon's Voice
Sitting Comfortably? Steve McQueen Tells The Story Of Humanity
E-news registration
E-mail story to a friend
Tell us what you think
Wildlife Photographer of the Year At Natural History Museum
Future 50 - Top Online Axis Artists In Leeds Exhibition
Yoko Ono Takes Her Love To Tyneside For BALTIC Show
Shetland Museum Unveils Evocative First World War Collection
Sisley In England And Wales At London's National Gallery
Darwin And His Big Idea At The Natural History Museum London
Babylon: Myth Or Reality? At The British Museum
The Hub's Guitars, Made In Britain, Played All Over The World
Interactive Map Explores Coastal Communities At Jaywick, Essex
The Post Office During WWI At The Cabinet War Rooms
St. Barbe Museum Hosts The Women's Land Army - A Portrait
Oliver Clegg's Night's Move At The Freud Museum London
New Walk Museum Hosts Ernest Gimson & The Arts And Craft Movement
Paths To Fame: Turner Watercolours From The Courtauld
National Portrait Gallery - Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life
Disposable People - Slavery Exposed At Southbank Centre
Soho Of The 1950s And 1960s At Photographers' Gallery
Eileen Agar: An Eye For Collage At Pallant House Gallery
Search this site
Home Page
News Page
Exhibition Page
What's On
Trails Page
Website of the Week
Letters Page
Welsh Home
Graphical Version
Copyright © 24 Hour Museum
Information published here was believed to be correct at the time it was prepared. Welsh language pages developed with CYMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, funded by the Welsh Assembly Government.