Urs Fischer at Cockatoo Island
Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour has a fascinating – if checkered – history. A former convict prison, a shipyard and a reformatory for wayward girls, the island also has a fascinating present as the site of a new installation by Swiss artist Urs Fischer. Fischer visited Sydney under the auspices of Kaldor Art Projects, whose previous projects have included Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Coast – One Million Square Feet (1969) and Jeff Koons’s floral Puppy (1995). Visit Cockatoo Island between now and June 3 to view Fischer’s artfully clunky and wonderfully gritty works – a skeleton climbs into/escapes from a packing case; impossibly contorted forearms are suspended from the ceiling and in the installation’s central piece, a huge knobbly structure, recalling both tree branches and disembodied limbs, spans the island’s central forecourt. A ghoulish spectacle.
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