The Royal Academy of Arts and St Pancras International unveil monumental mechanical work by Conrad Shawcross RA

Description of the exhibition by  The Royal Academy of Arts

This is the third installment of a four-year partnership between HS1 Ltd. (owners of St Pancras International) and the Royal Academy for the station’s public sculpture series, following Cornelia Parker RA’s One More Time in 2015 and Ron Arad RA’s Thought of Train of Thought in 2016. This year marks the fifth year of the Terrace Wires commission at the station.

The Interpretation of Movement (a 9:8 in blue), 2017, will be Conrad Shawcross’s most ambitious mechanical work to date, stretching out to a 16 m diameter as it methodically turns above the station concourse. Consisting of three articulated arms driven by a complex sequence of gears, the mechanism drives three ‘optic sails’ which expand and contract in an orbit from the centre, at which point they eclipse each other where they form a complex pattern of interference.

Conrad Shawcross RA, said: “The machine is driven by a precise set of gears taken from fundamental ratios within harmonics that culminate in an exact and controlled unified movement of its parts. I am convinced that meaning lies within the abstract interplay of its components together with their vectors and accelerations. The machine is elusive; it is constantly shifting in an undefinable state of change and constancy that echoes the very contradictory stuff that we are made of.”

Terrace Wires is a highly visible programme for public art, suspended from St Pancras International’s iconic Barlow Shed roof. It offers 48 million travellers each year the chance to experience the latest contemporary art as they pass through the station. This partnership between HS1 Ltd. and the Royal Academy of Arts builds on the shared belief in the values of bringing art to the community whilst celebrating the approach in 2018 of both the Royal Academy’s 250th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of St Pancras station. The commission is the Royal Academy’s only external public sculpture series in London and is free to view.

The Interpretation of Movement (a 9:8 in blue) will be at St Pancras International station until December 2017.