portico

Portico is a large inflatable textile artwork that contrasts deliberately with the classical architecture of the gallery building that hosts it. A series of large orange spikes appear to burst through the roof of the portico, the spikes at the front and sides projecting over the edges of the building to form a temporary, eye-catching fascinator within the city, visible both from the square in front of the gallery and from the city walls opposite. Created as part of the 2022 Aesthetica Prize Finalists Exhibition, the work was installed at York Art Gallery in York, UK, between June and September 2022, measuring sixteen metres long, nine metres wide, and eight metres high. It was fabricated from rip-stop nylon with electric fans, by Steve Messam Studio, with no dedicated client. The piece exploits the scale and geometry of the historic gallery, turning its formal roofline into a support for an almost carnival-like intrusion of saturated colour and air, inviting passers-by on the square and the walls above to look again at a familiar civic facade. Its temporary, pneumatic nature means it leaves no permanent trace, operating instead as a short-lived event in the urban field. Project details are limited in the source material.