Electric Art

10th February 2006, 12:00am
In September 2004 artist Simon Starling crossed the Tabernas Desert, Andalucia - familiar to all spaghetti western fans - on a home-made electric bike powered by compressed hydrogen. The only waste product was pure water, 600 millilitres of which he captured in a bottle, and later used in a painting of an Opuntia cactus. Mounted with the bicycle on perspex vitrine, this became “Tabernas Desert Run”, which was later bought by Glasgow City. Together with other recent acquisitions by Starling’s Glasgow Art School contemporaries, the prize-winning piece is on display in the city’s Gallery of Modern Art.www.glasgowmuseums.com