Plinth

“You can almost feel the gouache and tippex and graphite in the prints – lovely.”
Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson ‘Slipstream’ is a group of nine drawings made between 2011-2014 to accompany the artist’s 70-metre sculpture of the same name at Heathrow Terminal 2. The new limited-edition prints published by Sketched exhibit the work together for the first time.

Spanning four columns of Heathrow Terminal 2, Slipstream was modelled on a small aeroplane flown by the triple world-champion Red Bull air-racer Paul Bonhomme. The drawings bear witness to the challenge of conveying the stunt plane’s twisting velocity.

To create this monumental public work, Wilson ended up going back to his old model-making days as a child. “We all see our world from the eyes outward,” the artist reflected, “but what a lot of people don’t see is what’s inside our brain as thought. Drawing or models are all about that – How to take what’s behind the eyes and how to get that out, with a pencil, or a heated model aeroplane pushed into butter?”

By publishing this new collection of limited-edition prints of ‘Slipstream’ drawings, Sketched aims to explore that very same question. “It’s lovely to see the drawings as a set,” Wilson says, “as they’ve never been shown collectively. You can almost feel the gouache and tippex and graphite in the prints – lovely. Something taking a movement through space, enhanced by a series of arrows in play to give you a sense of direction. It’s a bit like going back to comic books, with arrows as movement or little marks that indicate a sense of direction with an object going through space.”