Sevenfold

When The Met opened its doors in December 2016, following a £4.6 million refurbishment, at the centre of the historical building is a newly commissioned installation by Liz West. The site-responsive piece entitled Sevenfold plays with the natural light of the space and injects vibrant colours and a sense of illusion into the magnificent entrance and staircase of the Victorian neo-classical building. Sevenfold takes its reference from Newton’s rainbow sequence of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet found when shining pure white light through a glass prism. Seven individual and vast prisms (six coloured prisms in the main installation plus one white prism above the reception desk) have been created that use mirrors to further radiate colour and reflect elements of the beautifully restored architecture.