His sea of reflective sump oil, which is permanently installed in the Saatchi Collection in London, was described as “one of the masterpieces of the modern age” by the art critic Andrew Graham Dixon. Now the sculptor Richard Wilson, twice nominated for the Turner Prize, has raised his game – literally – with the unveiling, last Wednesday, of Slipstream, a 77-tonne, 78-metre sculpture now hanging in Heathrow’s new Terminal 2. As an embodiment of flight, it’s indisputably impressive. The CAD-assisted scientific visualisation that went into its design may have missed the point, however. Compare it to the brutal simplicity of Moscow’s Monument to the Conquerors of Space…
and doesn’t it seem just a bit, well, wibbly?