An impressive new 300m long painting has been revealed at Canary Wharf, in time for Summer 2012. Titled A Beautiful Sunset Mistaken for a Dawn by artist Sinta Tantra, the artwork spans both sides of the DLR Bridge in the middle of the world-famous business and shopping district in central London. The work has been commissioned by Canary Wharf Group with over 5,000 litres of paint in seven different colours applied. The equivalent of over 3km of specialist masking tape was used to achieve the crisp, sharp edges on the straight lines and curves. Sinta Tantra's inspiration for the painting was gained through close attention to the Canary Wharf environment, including the natural elements, ever-changing light and the towering buildings, as well as observing how people interact with the place. A number of the shapes reflect the surrounding architecture, for example, curves on the adjacent Thomson Reuters office building.
Tantra recorded a 24-hour time-lapse sequence that showed the sunset and sunrise over the bridge. The palette echoes this study: blues and greys that work well during the daytime and purples and pinks that work well at night-time. Other inspiration for the colour scheme included research she has done on ‘English Dandyism'—tailoring and suits of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and tropical sunsets in Bali.
Tantra says, "Time and space form a peculiar concept in our modern world today. There is the working day, our relationship to technology juxtaposed with nature and the universe at large. Through the use of colour, scale and geometry, I wanted to create a painting that engaged the viewer at different times of the day and different times of the year; a piece of work that made you think about the surrounding architecture, the natural landscape and how we as bodies move along, around, above and beneath."
An impressive new 300m long painting has been revealed at Canary Wharf, in time for Summer 2012. Titled A Beautiful Sunset Mistaken for a Dawn by artist Sinta Tantra, the artwork spans both sides of the DLR Bridge in the middle of the world-famous business and shopping district in central London. The work has been commissioned by Canary Wharf Group with over 5,000 litres of paint in seven different colours applied. The equivalent of over 3km of specialist masking tape was used to achieve the crisp, sharp edges on the straight lines and curves. Sinta Tantra's inspiration for the painting was gained through close attention to the Canary Wharf environment, including the natural elements, ever-changing light and the towering buildings, as well as observing how people interact with the place. A number of the shapes reflect the surrounding architecture, for example, curves on the adjacent Thomson Reuters office building.
Tantra recorded a 24-hour time-lapse sequence that showed the sunset and sunrise over the bridge. The palette echoes this study: blues and greys that work well during the daytime and purples and pinks that work well at night-time. Other inspiration for the colour scheme included research she has done on ‘English Dandyism'—tailoring and suits of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and tropical sunsets in Bali.
Tantra says, "Time and space form a peculiar concept in our modern world today. There is the working day, our relationship to technology juxtaposed with nature and the universe at large. Through the use of colour, scale and geometry, I wanted to create a painting that engaged the viewer at different times of the day and different times of the year; a piece of work that made you think about the surrounding architecture, the natural landscape and how we as bodies move along, around, above and beneath."