Glow worked with Anthony Bennett to supply custom shaped balloons for his art piece ‘Bittersweet Air’ which was displayed in Sheffield’s Futurecade, Millennium Galleries, Sheffield, for The Festival of the Mind. The art piece used inflatable foil balloons that were designed to be the shape of a laughing gas canister. He worked with various medias to create this incredible demon representing his message.
The artists vision was to create a symbolic piece that envisages the dangerous greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (‘an invisible miscreation’) as a drag balloon dancer, a burlesque banshee emanating from Anthropocene soil. Can this man-made demon be stopped? Or popped? Anthony and his collaborator Professor Tim Daniell (Department of Animal and Plant Sciences) hope to raise awareness and understanding of one of the biggest issues in sustainable agriculture.
The artists explains that nitrous oxide has 300 times the greenhouse gas potency of carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is an invisible miscreation of modern agriculture, envisaged here in the shape of a demonic canister. However people consume it as a party drug as ‘laughing gas’ which is the opposite of what the gas is actually doing.
This concept is all represented by the demonic character he has built using the balloons supplied by Glow. We love to see our inflatables carefully put together with different media by this incredible artist.
Inflatables are so versatile and are an excellent medium for all types of sculptural and conceptual artists alike.