Copenhagen image courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/jimg944

After sifting through 1200 entries, drinking 500 coffees, grappling with Excel and undertaking some serious judging – we’ve finally got our winner! Drum roll please…

We are thrilled to announce that Loryn Garnsey from Sydney has won the trip to Copenhagen.

Congratulations Loryn, we hope you enjoy the trip and remember to take your time!

A huge thanks to everyone who entered and shared their experiences and beautiful descriptions of the exhibition with us.

‘Participants’ experience Eliasson and Ma’s Feelings are Facts exhibition at UCCA in Beijing. Copyright Studio Eliasson, 2010.

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson may have closed, but the artist continues to undertake more projects than ‘The cubic structural evolution project’ has LEGO parts. (Ok, maybe not that many) but Olafur Eliasson has just unveiled a new exhibition at Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China.

Working in collaboration with Chinese architect Ma Yansong, Feelings are facts bridges the disciplines of art and architecture and — naturally — requires the visitors’ participation.

The installation features condensed banks of artificially produced fog, which permeate coloured spaces or “zones” created by fluorescent lights installed in the ceiling. The size of these zones reference urban planning grids and their various colours create the notion of separate, measured spaces.

Viewers can move through the entire exhibition and create a map of their own using their colour perception as an orientation guide. Additionally, a slope in the floor disrupts the visitors’ horizontal orientation.

Together Eliasson and Ma have orchestrated an experience that gently provokes us to reorient ourselves within our surrounding space and dimensions.

The MCA team begin to bump out Take your time: Olafur Eliasson

A huge thank you from the MCA team for taking your time over the past few months. We’ll still be posting bits and pieces (including the competition winner!) here over the next few weeks. Make sure that you take the time to stop by.

Friday April 9. They say that too many chefs spoil the broth, in this case we beg to differ.

Each week, Olafur Eliasson’s ‘The structural evolution project’ (2004) morphs into everything from city skylines to skulls, lonely landscapes and animals. This week it looks like the above. Click below and scroll down to witness the evolution at MCA.

Comprised of thousands of Lego pieces, Olafur Eliasson’s ‘The cubic structural evolution project’ (2004) invites viewers — or in this case, participants — to sit down and contribute to the constantly evolving work of collaborative art. Each week, we will post a new image of the piece, so that you can track its unique evolution over time.

Wednesday March 31. There is barely enough room on the table now. We predict some serious demolition (gasp!) with the long weekend coming up.

Wednesday March 24. Things are getting very, very vertical this week.

Wednesday March 10. Is that the Empire State Building?

Wednesday February 16. Is there any lego left? It has taken on a life of its own…

Wednesday February 3. This week two French Stone Masons demonstrated their skills

Wednesday January 22. Team work!

Wednesday January 13. Damien Hirst watch out. A skull is at the centre of this week’s artwork.

Wednesday January 6. This week we have hearts, double helix and one very friendly alien.

Wednesday December 23. The second week in saw a spaceship and hundreds of vertical towers on the table.

Olafur Eliasson ‘The cubic structural evolution project’ (2004). Lego bricks, wood Purchased 2005. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery.

Image by Sarah Ackerman www.flickr.com/photos/sackerman519. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Four, three, two, one – gone! There are just four days left until Take your time: Olafur Eliasson closes for good, but MCA is helping you to make the most of the short timeframe.

On Thursday April 8 (that’s today!) exhibition hours will extend until 8pm so that you can come in for a final peek after work. If you can get to MCA by 6pm then make sure to hop on the last *sob* free curatorial tour for the entire show. A cash bar will also be running in the Foundation Hall to help you raise one last toast.

Through Friday to Sunday the exhibition will be open as normal from 10am to 5pm. We look forward to seeing you Take your time (for the final time!) over the next four days.

Image courtesy of www.itwasalwaysallforyou.tumblr.com

Ever since Take your time: Olafur Eliasson opened on December 10, 2009, we have been running a competition that aims to directly connect one of you with Copenhagen, where Eliasson grew up. To enter, all you need to do is see the exhibition (very important!) and then tell us how it made you feel. Here are some of our favourite entries so far:

Watching ‘Beauty’ felt a little like a religious experience: primal, ghost-like, ethereal. I had the urge to stand underneath and eat the air. — Rosanna, SA

A serene electric shock. — Belinda, NSW

It was a love/hate relationship. I loved ‘Moss wall’ and could have slept beside it. ‘Room for one colour’ made me run, almost screaming. — Basiliou, QLD

My mind has been bent, inflexibly, out of line. — Matt, ACT

Walking through ‘One way colour tunnel’, it felt like crayons had exploded on a sharp canvas of angled glass. Incredible. — Loryn, NSW

Like a long cool drink of water. — Rosie, NSW

Amalya (four), Max (six) and I ran through the dark tunnel, through the rain mist, catching rainbows and dragons. It was colour magic. — Cate, NSW

Like watching colour TV for the first time. — Luke, VIC

MCA YOU’VE DONE ALRIGHT,
SHOWING LIGHT IS MIGHT.
ROOM, SPACE, A DYING SUN:
ARCTIC ART BY ELIASSON.
HAPPILY, WE ALL CONCUR,
GOOD ON’YER OLAFUR. - John NSW

We’d like to say a very big thank you to all who have shared their experience so far. The competition remains open until the end of the exhibition so, if you haven’t already, let us know how it feels to take your time.

Olafur Eliasson ‘Experiment for the Martin-Gropius-Bau’, 2009. © 2009 Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson’s upcoming exhibition Innen Stadt Außen is especially significant for two reasons. One, because it is his first solo exhibition in a Berlin institution. And two, because it centres on his close relationship with the city in which he works and lives.

For the past 15 years, Eliasson has run his studio and education space, the Institut für Raumexperimente, from Berlin. Open to experiments in architecture and urban structure, the city has cemented itself as a creative hub that extends from technology to the arts.

Olafur Eliasson ‘Experiment for the Martin-Gropius-Bau’, 2009. © 2009 Olafur Eliasson.

Running from April 28 until August 9 at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum and curated by 2009 Venice Biennale director Daniel Birnbaum, Innen Stadt Außen is closely concerned with the relationship between museum and city.

The series of site-specific installations will present a varied example of Eliasson’s artistic practice and, no doubt, an articulate examination of his home city.

Olafur Eliasson, Multiple shadow house 2010, stained wood, metal hardware, fabric, spotlights, gammalux and optitrans screens 396x141 1/2x532inches 1006x360x1351cm. Copyright Studio Eliasson.

This one is for all the New Yorkers out there (or those lucky enough to be visiting the Big Apple in the next week). Tanya Bonakdar Gallery recently opened a new exhibition by Olafur Eliasson titled Multiple shadow house. The namesake work in the exhibition combines Eliasson’s long running fascination with optics, light, colour and… us.

Olafur Eliasson, Multiple shadow house 2010. Copyright Studio Eliasson.

The work is comprised of simple wooden rooms that feature large projection screens. A series of lamps with colour filters are beamed upon each of screen, creating seemingly identical walls of white light.

However, when we – the users and participants – step in front of the screens, our shadows appear as rainbows of coloured light. These silhouettes change in colour and pattern according to our movements; we essentially construct the artwork, which is the experience.

Olafur Eliasson, Multiple shadow house 2010. Copyright Studio Eliasson.

Multiple shadow house is on show until March 20, 2010, so be quick! A series of Eliasson’s watercolour drawings, an afterimage experiment film, and the painting ‘Colour experiment no. 3′ (2009) are also on display in the gallery upstairs.

A short video on the experience of Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Beauty’ (2003).

The MCA will be open until 8pm for the last four Thursdays of Take your time: Olafur Eliasson.

You’ve peered through ‘Sunset kaleidoscope’ (2005) in the morning and sniffed about ‘Moss wall’ (1994) in the afternoon, but we bet you haven’t walked through ‘One way colour tunnel’ (2007) at night – until now.

For the last month of Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, the MCA is extending its opening hours every Thursday from March 18.

Come and experience the exhibition after dark on the following dates:

Thursday March 18, until 8pm

Thursday March 25, until 8pm

Thursday April 1, until 8pm

Thursday April 8, until 8pm