Liverpool building turned “inside out” for Capital of Culture year

A building in central Liverpool is to be turned inside out in the run up to the city being crowned European Capital of Culture in 2008. Work is underway on artist Richard Wilson’s “Turning the Place Over” at Cross Keys House on Moorfields, ahead of its premiere next month. The work involves a 26ft diameter hole being cut from the building’s façade, and then slowly oscillated in three dimensions on a special “rotator”. The ovoid hole is said to act as a “huge opening and closing ‘window’, offering recurrent glimpses of the interior during its constant cycle during daylight hours”. Work on the project started in February and involves the deconstruction of the façade across three floors of the building, which is then reconstructed and fixed to a giant pivot. The piece is described as “disturbing and disorientating from a distance”, and “thrilling” from close-up. The project was commissioned by the Liverpool Culture Company and Liverpool Biennial, and funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA). Cross Keys House, formerly a Yates’s Wine Lodge, is currently owned by the NWDA. Wilson has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize. His most famous work is 20:50, a “sea” of reflective sump oil, which was permanently on display in London’s Saatchi Gallery prior to the gallery’s relocation in 2005. Click here to see the facade section spin and turn:  http://www.biennial.com/ttpo/