No looking back

Size matters

Following relatively low-key outings last year, both ABHK and Art Central seem ready to make a splash with large-scale installations. The trend might partly reflect the urge to leave behind two years of pandemic-related stress and create art unhindered by the constraints of space or imagination.

A good example of post-pandemic aspirations for a less-restricted, and more hopeful, creative space is Tom Friedman's Looking Up - a 33-foot-high (10-meter-high) sculpture of a man looking skywards. His reedy thinness, rippled aluminum-foil body and disarmingly guileless expression draw our sympathy, while the figure's extraordinary height, or elongation, accentuates his vulnerability.

Friedman points out that some of the words printed on the material (upcycled from ovens) - like "Support the bottom" - are still visible on his sculpture. "I see this as a request to be empathetic to the vulnerable, the disenfranchised and the needy," he says.