Architizer News
Installation Recreates Iconic Final Scene From “The Italian Job”
August 13, 2012
“Hang On a Minute Lads, I’ve Got An Idea” is the latest project from British sculptor Richard Wilson, whose work often has architectural implications. The installation features a replica bus precariously hanging over the edge of the roof of the Erich Mendelsohn’s De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a town on the Southern coast of England.
The dangling bus directly recalls the final scene from the film ‘The Italian Job’, while the title, the artist says, comes from the lines spoken by Michael Caine. The artist writes, “The title of the work is taken from the final words in the film spoken by Michael Caine, when the coach, climbing the Italian Alps and carrying a gang of robbers and a fortune in gold, swerves off the road and teeters precariously over the edge of the mountain. With the gang at one end and the gold at the other, the film finishes with an impossible dilemma—how can they save the gold, themselves and the coach from falling over the edge?” That this same dilemma now occurs on the roof of one of the most iconic early Modernist buildings in Britain certainly adds a bit more frisson to the seaside village where it is located, though the fact that scientists have now solved the cliffhanger ought to comfort vacationers.
[via CONTEMPORIST]














