From the artist
Make your own cut-out world from Olafur Eliason
Olafur Eliasson copies nature, except he always lets you know that the thing she makes aren’t real. So, in one of his waterfalls the water doesn’t fall at all; it goes up instead of down.
Eliasson has also painted rivers. Instead of making a painting of rivers that you could hang up on a wall he really painted the river itself. He went up on a bridge and dropped coloured dye into a river until the water turned bright green! What you think about the bright green river is up to you and that is part of the work.
Green river 1998
One of Eliasson’s most famous works is called The Weather Project. He built it in the Tate Modern in London. It’s a massive sun made out of electric lightbulbs that make everything around them look yellow-orange. There’s a machine nearby that makes mist and clouds. The ceiling is covered with mirrors. The scene really looks like a cloudy sky. But after a while it all looks a bit too perfect. The sun begins to feel a bit too round (like the suns on a TV weather map) and everything begins to feel yellow-orange. You begin to think it would be much more interesting to watch the real sun with aeroplanes flying in front of it and buildings or trees getting in the way. In fact, standing in an empty power station watching a fake electric sun feels like a really silly thing to do.
The weather project 2003
Eliasson seems to be able to make you think about the world without you really noticing it. One minute you’re staring at his fake weather systems and the next you’ve gone off on a long ramble about what the sun looks like and whether it actually looks like what you think it looks like. Come to think of it, it might have been better if Eliasson had actually titled his work ‘The Whether Project’. Who’s to say he didn’t just spell it wrong?
Cut-out World: Make your own globe
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