Anish Kapoor - Sky Mirror

Between 2001 and 2006 the internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor created two versions of a sculpture entitled Sky Mirror and what it did basically is what it says on the tin.

 
Sky Mirror was commissioned by the Nottingham Playhouse from the artist and is installed outside the theatre in Wellington Circus, Nottingham.

It took six years from the initial idea for a major new piece of public art to the unveiling of Sky Mirror on 27 April 2001, and cost £900,000. At the time, it was the most expensive piece of civic art funded by the National Lottery.

The artwork itself, which was manufactured in Finland, is a six-metre-wide concave dish of polished stainless steel weighing ten tons and angled up towards the sky. It reflects the ever-changing environment, season to season, day and night.

In the autumn of 2006 (September 19 – October 27), Sky Mirror was unveiled at Rockefeller Center in New York City. The installation was a larger version of the Nottingham sculpture. It had a 35-foot diameter (10.6 metres), stood three stories tall, and weighed 23 tons. The convex side faced Fifth Avenue, the concave side the Rockefeller Center courtyard. The sculpture reflected and inverted the Center's skyscrapers, thus, in the words of the artist, bringing "the sky down to the ground".

In autumn 2007 the Nottingham Playhouse Sky Mirror was voted Pride of Place in a poll to find Nottingham's favourite landmark.