Studio Orta

A suspended meeting place, the sky is the agora of our imagination.

On April 18, 2013 Lucy + Jorge Orta unveil their monumental work Cloud | Metéoros at St Pancras International. As part of a new initiative titled Terrace Wires, the artists have been selected to create the very first public sculpture to be suspended in the Barlow Shed of the Eurostar terminal.

The artwork will be a cardinal welcome to the nearly one million visitors to the station each week. Floating amid the glass-vaulted architecture of the historic Barlow Shed, Cloud | Metéoros resembles vast cumuli populated with travellers, a ‘magic carpet’ taking passengers on an imaginary journey in the skies. It also carries a more political message. The cloud calls into question how mankind will share the vital resource of water on earth.
Meteoros is derived from ancient Greek, meaning raised from the ground, suspended, lofty or in the midst. Clouds have long been intercessors between reality and the imagination, between heaven and earth, lightness and gravity. They inhabit the skies of Renaissance fresco paintings, often depicted crowded with laymen and prophets, angels and deities. Throughout history, this celestial vault has been a site of conviviality, of learning and exchange.

Terrace Wires is an initiative by HS1 Limited. This ambitious project finds its home in London alongside other annual public art commissions, including the Fourth Plinth, Turbine Hall at Tate Modern and the summer pavilion at Serpentine Gallery.