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Tate lines up bankside mural
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 06.09.06
Landmark: the 50-metre artwork Poured Lines is made up of graffiti-proof enamel panels
Labour of love: artist Ian Davenport spent two years creating the £300,000 mural
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London's most spectacular outdoor public artwork has been installed in Bankside. Ian Davenport's massive mural, entitled Poured Lines, at nearly 50 metres long and three metres high, is longer than Michelangelo's painting for the Sistine Chapel.
The capital's latest cultural landmark runs along a wall beneath the Western railway bridge over Southwark Street, one of the main approaches to Tate Modern. The gallery acted as an adviser to Poured Lines, which depicts Davenport's trademark multi-colour painted stripes set against a white background.
Davenport - nominated for the 1991 Turner Prize aged 25 - was commissioned to create the work by Britain's largest property developer, Land Securities, and Southwark council as part of a public art initiative to boost regeneration in Bankside.
"It's a super funky, incredibly bright, 50-metre-long painting," Davenport told the Evening Standard. "There's something fabulous about making paintings on such a large urban scale." He said the luminous look was designed to brighten up the day: "It's literally bringing colour into people's lives and something very easy for the audience who walk past to work out. But some parts of it are much more subtle and quiet, which the audience will pick up after they've seen it a few times."
While Davenport can look back with pride at his completed mural today, Poured Lines was a labour of love for the artist whose previous biggest project was a 13-metre high mural for Tate Britain in 2003.
The £300,000 project took Davenport two years from conception to completion. The stripes were painted onto a run of huge steel panels using a 50ml syringe. They were then fired in a huge furnace to harden the material.The only European producer he could find to make the graffiti-proof enamel panels was a factory in Schwarzenberg, east Germany. Davenport spent several months in Germany during the making of what he describes as a "Herculean epic".
He credits his wife Sue Arrowsmith, who helped make Poured Lines, for convincing him to take on the task. "At first I was concerned at how big it was going to be but she said I couldn't turn it down.
"As an artist I'll only get to do something like this once or twice in my career. Hopefully it will become a real landmark."
He added: "After Wednesday night [when the work is honoured with an official reception at Tate Modern] I'm going to lie down and not get up for six months."
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