Art / UNBOXED
Weston-super-Mare welcomes SEE MONSTER, the retired oil rig turned installation
A retired North Sea oil rig has begun its transformation into a free public art installation for visitors to Weston-super-Mare’s Tropicana, from August-October.
The rig voyaged on a barge for five days in order to reach its new seaside home, and its new life, as SEE MONSTER: “a colossal manifestation of all it has witnessed along its journey around the turbulent coast”.
The project is one of the 10 components of the 2022 festival, UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, along with groundbreaking initiatives including dreamachine and Green Space Dark Skies.
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Visitors to SEE MONSTER will be able to travel up and inside the reborn rig, which will feature a playful new aesthetic, featuring a 12 metre waterfall as well as a wild garden inside its cavernous structure.
SEE MONSTER will also harness its own energy from natural elements contained within it.
Its creators are hopeful that the transformed rig will present a fun, sensory and inspirational vision of the future, demonstrating how we might make our inherited structures greener and more sustainable.
Patrick O’Mahony, artistic director and founder of NEWSUBSTANCE, calls it “an experiment in transformation”, as well as “an art installation that is forward-looking, aiming to frame and open an optimistic conversation around reuse”.
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SEE MONSTER will be launching with a phased opening during the August bank holiday, and running until October 2022. For more information and to plan your visit, go to www.seemonster.co.uk.
Main photo: SEE MONSTER
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