Subvert ing skylines
Artist cuts holes in buildings, slices up ships and now he’s perched a bus on top of The Peninsula
Richard Wilson
y now most of us have caught a glimpse of the hair-raising sculptural spectacle that is Richard Wilson’s Hang On A Minute Lads … I’ve Got A Great Idea— a British coach teetering on the edge of The Peninsula’s seventh-floor Sun Terrace. The ground-breaking public art installation marks the beginning of a three-year collaboration between the Hong Kong hotel and artists from London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Overlooking The Peninsula’s grand entrance, the sculpture weighs in at almost seven tonnes and, at its core, uses hydraulic equipment programmed to rock the bus by up to 12 degrees at random intervals, giving the impression that it could plunge to the ground at any moment from atop the hotel’s grand facade. “The ultimate goal is to make something structurally daring, a spectacle teetering on the edge of being and not being, and between stability and collapse,” says Wilson. “It speaks of the limits one wanted to go as an artist, and how daring one is willing to be in terms of sculptural ideas.” The work is inspired by a cliffhanger moment in the 1969 British heist movie The Italian Job.