Pipeline II

Nancy Holt
1986
Fairbanks Arts Association, Fairbanks, Alaska
Steel, oil
Dimensions unknown

Holt visited Alaska in March of 1986 upon invitation from the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage, who hoped she might create a work of art in celebration of the region’s beauty. Holt was instead struck by the infiltration of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline through pristine wilderness. Holt returned to Alaska to create the System Work Pipeline at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska Anchorage in July of 1986. A few months later, Holt created Pipeline II at the Fairbanks Arts Association in Fairbanks, which was on display from September 5 to 28, 1986. The primary materials of both Pipeline works are steel and oil, but the work extends beyond the gallery space and calls attention to the architecture and systems of the buildings in which they were exhibited. The steel pipes of Pipeline II twist in and out of the gallery and visually penetrate through the building to the interior space below. A section of pipe held up by metal supports leaks oil, pooling thickly on a white base.

Writing

Writing by the Artist

Pipeline

Nancy Holt

In March 1986, I visited Alaska under the auspices of the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage, an institution partly endowed by the oil companies in Alaska.

The Visual Arts Center invited me there to experience the vast Alaskan Environment, anticipating that the experience would generate an idea for an artwork. For ten days I roamed the land looking at various sites, including the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. In July I returned to Alaska and constructed a work, which evolved from the strongest of my main initial impressions of that place.

Related Info

See Also

Sky Mound
Nancy Holt
1984—
I-A Landfill, Hackensack Meadowlands, New Jersey, USA