Roll out the barrels

Supersized artwork by Christo floats on London’s Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park

The ducks, geese and hardy cold-water swimmers in London’s Hyde Park have a new neighbour: a monumental floating structure made from 7,506 stacked barrels coloured bright red, mauve and blue.

The London Mastaba, unveiled Monday, is the latest installation by Christo, a master of supersized artworks who has previously wrapped Berlin’s Reichstag in silver fabric and festooned New York’s Central Park with thousands of saffroncoloured cloth gates.

The 83-year-old artist’s first major creation in London rises 20 metres above the surface of the park’s Serpentine Lake.

Its slope-sided trapezoid was inspired by ancient Mesopotamian benches and Egyptian tombs. The colours have been chosen to complement the lush greenery and grey-blue skies of a London summer.

The sculpture, which will float on the lake until Sept. 23, is accompanied by an exhibition at the nearby Serpentine Gallery tracing the barrel-based artworks Christo has created since the 1950s — often with his wife and artistic partner, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009.

The pair started experimenting with paint cans and upsized to oil drums, using them to create walls, mounds and other structures, both monumental and temporary.

Many of their grander schemes have never been built. Others took decades.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude first dreamed of a floating mastaba — Arabic for bench — in 1967. Initially it was to be built on Lake Michigan. Five decades later, it has finally arisen in London.

Since 1977, Christo has been planning an even bigger version: a mastaba set in the Abu Dhabi desert that would be made from 410,000 barrels, rise 500 feet (150 metres) and constitute the largest sculpture in the world. Like Christo’s other works, The London Mastaba is temporary. At summer’s end, it will be dismantled and the barrels recycled, in keeping with Christo’s “leave no trace” philosophy. For now, it floats serenely, drawing a mixed reaction from the walkers, joggers and cyclists who use the park each day.

Local Lucia Halpern, who watched the work being constructed in the park over two months, said her cockapoo Coco was a fan, “because it keeps the ducks away and she can go in the water.”

But she declared herself “a bit disappointed” by the structure.

The Bulgaria-born, New Yorkbased Christo is unconcerned about getting divergent reviews.

“Any interpretation is legitimate — critical or positive,” he said. “All make you think. This is why we are human — to think.”