Frozen Sky

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

"Frozen Sky" comprises two works by Langlands and Bell, one black and one white (GAC 17388/2). At first glance, "Frozen Sky" appears to show two clock faces side by side. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the dials are composed of the three-letter codes used to represent international airports, such as CDG (Paris Charles de Gaulle) and LHR (London Heathrow). Langlands and Bell have been working in collaboration since the late 1970s and are fascinated by the codes and systems by which we live. Here, the use of white on black and black on white suggests night and day, and the twenty-four-hour pace of modern life.

Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell met as students at Middlesex Polytechnic in 1978 and have worked in collaboration ever since. Their practice is primarily concerned with the relationships between people and the architecture in which we live our lives. They have said ‘we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.’ Langlands and Bell have exhibited widely around the world, including exhibitions in Tokyo at TN Probe (1998) and CCA Kitakyushu (1997 and 2020-21). In the late 1990s, they were part of the group of artists known at the time as the ‘Young British Artists’, and their works featured in the 'Sensation' touring exhibition that opened at the Royal Academy in 1997. In the same year, a major touring exhibition of their work from 1986–1996 featured at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Grey Art Gallery in New York and the Kunsthalle, Bielefeld. In 2004, the artists’ exhibition, 'The House of Osama Bin Laden' won a BAFTA Award in the category of Interactive Arts Installation. The exhibition was shown at the Imperial War Museum, London and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Since 2008, solo exhibitions of Langlands and Bell’s work include shows in London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Kitakyushu and Accra.

Places

Subjects

allegory & symbolism, conceptual art

Materials & Techniques

acrylic sheet, MDF, paint, cellulose lacquer, glass (glass as material), wood, diptych, screenprint, wall-mounted sculpture

Artist

Langlands and Bell (1955;1959 - )

Title

Frozen Sky

Edition

2/2

Date

1997

Medium

Wall-mounted, framed and glazed sculptural panel

Dimensions

height: 135.00 cm, width: 135.00 cm, depth: 16.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artists, March 1999

Inscription

verso: FROZEN SKY / Langlands & Bell / 1997 / DIPTYCH - LEFT HAND SIDE

GAC number

17388/1