Best of the Noughties - Top 10 temporary installations

Welcome to the second instalment of “Best of the Noughties”. After zeroing in on music blogs last week, we now turn our attention to temporary public art installations, the most eye-catching movement that arose this decade.

The installations we have selected display only a fraction of what is out there, but they are undoubtedly some of the most impressive, definitive and thought-provoking temporary art pieces around. When installation art does its job, it should effectively stop you in your tracks. Because it’s impossible to show what it would feel like to be in front of these powerful installations, we've selected ten that speak for themselves.

Picture via gizmodo

Temporary Waterfalls NYC: Danish artstar Olafur Eliasson was inspired by wind and water when he built these breathtaking waterfalls that graced four areas in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governor’s Island.The ambitious works temporarily transformed the city's shorelines, and spectacularly integrated the natural world into the urban landscape.

Minimum Movement Intervention: Brazilian artist Nelé Azevedo drew attention to the issue of global warming in a very simple and seductive way. She created 1000 ice men that melted in various places in Portugal, Brazil, Germany, France and Italy, and left us contemplating the world’s condition.

The Tree: Imagine a soccer match with a 10-meter high magnolia tree in the middle of the field. What might normally be seem a hindrance to players was actually a thoughtful ode to political prisoners who suffered under Chilean dictator Pinochet. Experimental artist Sebastian Errazuriz planted the tree on a former torture site, and a game was played in front of 15,000 people.

The Swimmer: The Discovery Channel installed a gigantic swimmer next to London’s iconic Tower Bridge to draw attention to their upcoming show “London Ink”, a show about tattooists. Normally we’re not into “corporate advertising”, but this 10.7 meter-long embedded sculpture was too ingenious to resist.

Phone Cord Sheep – Annoying old phone cords were reborn in Frankfurt as a whimsical herd of sheep, in a project by French artist Jean Luc Cornec. Particularly clever are the heads and feet made out of rotary phone earpieces. Much better than those cows that stand around the cities nowadays.

Memory Cloud: Like Native Americans, the Minimaforms team used smoke signals to create a dynamic light environment that projected personal messages. The project at London’s Trafalgar Square was designed to “motivate social interaction”. Inspiring and beautiful.

By Marek Blahus

Entropa: The enormous mosaic was supposed to display the work of 27 EU artists, and was installed in the European Council in Brussels under that assumption. Hilariously, the whole project was done by sardonic Czech artist David Cerny, who united Europe in displeasure by depicting countries by their stereotypes. France is shown on strike, Luxembourg is a lump of gold. Controversial, brilliant and prominently displayed…at least for a while.

Urban River: 4000 litres of paint and 1000 meters of a blue painted road later, this mind-blowing urban river was born, with the words "Water Is Life" written across it. It was implemented by Henk Hofstra to commemorate the waterway that used to lie until this road in Drachten, The Netherlands.

Photo by Russ Atkinson

Big Rig Jig: Doesn’t this remind you of Transformers? Presented at the legendary Burning Man Project in Nevada’s Black Rock City, this monstrous installation was built out from two oil rigs and addresses the forgotten ties “between the industrial and the organic world.”

Chairs: 1600 wooden stools were used for this prominent installation by Columbian artist Doris Salcedo, who is known for experimenting with improbable vertical environments. For the Istanbul Biennial, Salcedo piled this sublime heap of chairs between two buildings to convey the burdens and conflicts of Columbia’s political history.