Bizarre and colorful giant spikes pop up in colonnades, sculptures, and buildings around a city. These are Steve Messam’s artworks. Messam is a UK-based artist whose artworks disrupt the viewers’ common ways of perceiving their familiar surroundings.
Spiked (2021) is a big yellow inflatable spike that explodes through the columns of the Temple of Piety, UK. This artwork redefines the temple’s status as the heart of the Studley Royal folly garden. The artist intends to present a transformative effect on immediate surroundings through his art. This work is a part of These Passing Things (2021), temporary artwork that bursts upon the landscape of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal’s folly buildings and water gardens.
Oranje (2022) looks like a green inflatable crown surrounding the statue of Willem van Oranje, The Hague. Oranje is a figure who advocates civil and religious freedom. The artist creates this work as a part of BlowUp Art The Hague, a three-week outdoor exhibition in a specific site at the city center of The Hague.
In The Hague’s exhibition, Messam also shows another work entitled Tunnel (2022), an installation of a huge green bubble that acts as a tunnel at the 15th-century Gevangenpoort, The Hague. the Gevangenpoort used to be the main gateway to the Binnenhof (now the Houses of Parliament) and the most infamous prison in Holland. In the 1920s, one side of the gateway was demolished to create a wider road. Messam’s Tunnel re-imagines the sense of gateway that has changed over time, inviting the visitor to explore some historical moments that happened within the wall.
The artist’s ephemeral site-specific installation invites the viewer to “re-imagine everydayness” and perceive the historical landscape and vacant architecture in a new way. Messam explores “the layers of narrative” within the rural and urban environment. His artworks reflect on the existing geological, cultural, and agricultural practices that shape the landscape. Messam’s installations reveal the untold stories and deep understanding of place.
Messam’s artworks often belong to environmental art. Environmental art is an art that deals with the social and political issues around the natural and urban environment. Environmental is usually created directly in the used land or landscapes.
As part of contemporary artworks, Messam’s inflatable installations cause the emergence, what Walter Benjamin calls, the “shock effect”. The heightened presence of the mind cushions shock and this heightened presence of the mind means the existence of consciousness. When somebody shock, their body is overstimulating, because of taking too much information.
People are often not really aware of the things they encounter every day. However, artworks like Messam’s installations create a shocking effect that triggers people’s consciousness to make them more aware of their everyday things and environment.