 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
||||||||||||||||
| DNA Goes Shopping | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
|
Posted: May 14, 2004
|
The British artist Abigail Fallis has created the first model of DNA made of shopping trolleys, or shopping carts as they are known in the United States. The sculpture is called DNA DL90 (the shopping trolley is model DL90).
Last fall, a supermarket chain in Great Britain commissioned Fallis to build a “very big sculpture” for its charity-of-the-year campaign that would raise public awareness about the importance of scientific research on muscular dystrophy. The artist was invited to use materials from a supermarket, and she chose the shopping trolley, an icon of today’s society. “I have always wanted to use shopping trolleys in a work, and this was the ideal opportunity,” says Fallis, who lives in London. She stacked 22 trolleys in the shape of DNA’s double helix, bolting the trolleys to “arms” that she welded to a pole.
Fallis also created a smaller DNA sculpture out of children’s shopping trolleys. The half-size version is touring museums and art venues in the United Kingdom to help raise money for research on muscular dystrophy, a disease that progressively weakens the muscles of the body. A crane transported the original sculpture, which is eight meters tall (about 26 feet), to its current home at the Goodwood Sculpture Park in West Sussex, England. The trolleys were donated by a German manufacturer. “They loved the idea, and gladly sent me over the trolleys I requested,” says Fallis.
All images are courtesy Sculpture at Goodwood. — Birgit Reinert
|
|||||||||||||||
