Christo to build a 20 metre-high floating sculpture made of oil barrels in London’s Hyde Park

Artist Christo has unveiled plans for a floating structure to sit in the Serpentine Lake in London’s Hyde Park this summer. The Mastaba will be more than 20 metres high and constructed from over 7000 oil barrels, weighing 500 tons. The barrels will be coloured red, white, blue and purple to reflect the colours of the union flag. “The mauve is very royal,” said the artist in an interview with the New York Times.

The London sculpture will be unveiled in late June to coincide with an exhibition about the artists work with his late wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude that will run at the Serpentine Galleries. “The exciting part of the project is that it’s detached from the urban landscape,” said Christo. “You have this incredible vegetation and open area.”

The London Mastaba will be the latest in a series of trapezoidal structures designed by the artist that are inspired by Mesopotamian architecture. The first appeared in Texas in 1975, and there are plans for a permanent one in Abu Dhabi which the artist says will be the largest art structure in the world.