London - The audience shudders as the young art student in boots and a zipped-up black overall fires a blood-red wax cannon across the ornate rooms of London's Royal Academy of Arts in a new exhibition of the work of Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor. From Saturday, the loud bang of this "cannon-fire" will be heard at regular intervals from the 18th century gallery building as it presents a range of gigantic installations of the award-winning sculptor in its first-ever retrospective devoted to a living member of the Royal Academy.
The splattered wax from Kapoor's recent work Shooting in the Corner will gradually build up on the floor and whitewashed walls in a perfect demonstration of the artist's aim to use "noble spaces" for his highly-sophisticated brand of performance art, according to curator Jean de Loisy.
By presenting new materials in old surroundings the artist was hoping to make a link between the present and the past.
Kapoor, 54, was born in Mumbai but made London his base in the early 1970s. He won the Turner Prize in 1991 and has exhibited extensively worldwide, being regarded as one of the most influential sculptors of his generation.
Similarly engaging is Kapoor's monumental work Svayambh - a huge block of red wax resembling a train that slowly glides on tracks through five rooms in the gallery, smearing its marbled arches with splashes of red.
Svayambh, a title derived from a Sanskrit word meaning "born by itself," first caught the eye of former RA exhibition secretary Norman Rosenthal when it was exhibited in Munich, in 2007.
The windowless train, passing slowly and silently through the rooms and shutting out the light as it squeezes through the archways, was linked to the Holocaust by German critics who associated it with the transport of Jews to the death camps.
The work had been of particular poignancy to Germany because of its history, but was being interpreted differently wherever it was shown, said Charles Saumarez Smith, the secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy.
Among new works Kapoor made for the London exhibition is Hive, a monumental brown steel installation that greets the visitor at the start of the gallery tour, its industrial scale relaying a sense of enclosure.
The exhibition surveys Kapoor's career to date, showcasing a number of new and previously unseen works, including a select group of colourful early pigment sculptures, a room full of cement "worm" sculptures and numerous polished stainless steel mirrors that reflect - and engage - the visitor.
"The mirrors are like eyes that come alive when people enter the gallery," said de Loisy.
Similarly, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, a towering new steel structure, Tall tree and the Eye, has been erected, reflecting both visitors and the Palladian buildings lining the square.
The mirrors, resembling huge silver baubles on a Christmas tree, were a "kind of eye which is reflecting images endlessly," Kapoor said of the 15-metre-high structure.
"There is nothing heavy or imposing about it, but there is something quite improbable. You cannot tell how it has been put up and that is part of its mystery and dignity."
