EVERYONE I’VE EVER KNOWN by Rhys Coren
ARTIST:
Rhys Coren
ARTWORK:
Everyone I’ve Ever Known
LOCATION:
Medici Courtyard, London W1
MATERIAL:
Terrazzo
DIMENSIONS:
2600 × 9000mm
COMMISSIONED:
Great Portland Estates
Translating an artist’s drawing into a nine-metre-wide-terrazzo artwork required precision at every stage of fabrication.
Everyone I’ve Ever Known is a large-scale public artwork by British artist Rhys Coren, created in 2020 and installed at Medici Courtyard, London W1, in 2022.
Measuring 2.6 × 9 metres, the work transforms Coren’s original drawing into an intricate composition of coloured terrazzo. Working directly from the artist’s design, Southside Waterjet translated the drawing into individual components before precision waterjet cutting every element from terrazzo manufactured by Diespeker.
The irregular forms, changing colours and sheer number of individual pieces made accuracy critical. Each component needed to correspond precisely with the surrounding elements so that, when assembled, hundreds of separate pieces would resolve into a single continuous composition.
Following cutting, the complete artwork was dry laid and assembled at Southside, allowing the position and fit of each individual terrazzo element to be checked against Coren’s original drawing. Once the composition had been carefully verified, the pieces were epoxy bonded and mechanically fixed to an aluminium honeycomb backing. The completed backing was then fixed to a stainless steel frame, creating the structural system for the finished nine-metre artwork.
The completed work preserves the spontaneity and movement of Coren’s original composition at architectural scale. What appears as one fluid artwork is the result of hundreds of individually fabricated elements, brought together through precision cutting and meticulous assembly.
FROM CONCEPT TO FABRICATION
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