Axiom

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France

Axiom, a work by Conrad Shawcross, was one of four works that were specially commissioned by the Government Art Collection in 2008, for the newly-refurbished Ministry of Justice building in central London. Works by Martin Boyce, Lothar Götz and Nathaniel Rackowe were also commissioned for the building.

Axiom is a complex, spiraling wooden structure made from a stack of tetrahedrons rising up from the lower ground floor of the atrium of the building to tower above surrounding structures. Shawcross makes large-scale sculptures containing ideas and allusions drawn from science and cosmology that are intended to inspire and intrigue the viewer. Often made from wood and metal, his intricate, well-crafted constructions sometimes incorporate moving parts, which generally have no practical function. Emanating majesty and banality in equal measure, Shawcross's tower is a monument to uncertainty and infinite possibility.

Conrad Shawcross was born in London in 1977. He studied at Ruskin College, Oxford, and at the Slade School of Art in London. He had solo exhibitions in both Munich and Spain in 2004. In 2007, he won a major commission at the Unilever headquarters in Blackfriars. In 2009, he became an international fellow at Location One in New York and was the London Science Museum's Centenary Artist in Residence.

Places

Subjects

abstract

Materials & Techniques

steel, wood, sculpture (as object name), wood sculpture

Artist

Conrad Shawcross (1977 - )

Title

Axiom

Date

2009

Medium

Wooden sculpture with steel fixings

Dimensions

height: 1346.00 cm, width: 255.90 cm, depth: 255.90 cm

Acquisition

Commissioned for the Ministry of Justice, London, September 2008; completed February 2009

Provenance

the artist (commission)

GAC number

18252