I don't suppose Anish Kapoor, maker of exquisitely, dreamily gorgeous sculptures, often has his work discussed in football metaphors. But, given that his most recent undertaking - a 50m long membrane of blood-red PVC - is suspended in an empty shell of a building on the banks of a river immortalised in song by Gazza, it seems only appropriate to describe this as a temporary site-specific installation of two halves.
On the banks of the Tyne at Gateshead, the former Baltic Flour Mills building is mid-way through its redevelopment into a massive new contemporary art space, due to open in September 2001.
Its original interior has now been removed, leaving only the hugely dramatic external walls temporarily enmeshed in steel scaffolding, and a vast 1,000sqm hollow inside. Open to the elements (that infamous fog, for example, that Gazza was so possessive about), filled with the sound of gulls swooping all about, it is already a startling prospect.
To this, Kapoor has added a devilishly dramatic, audacious installation. Suspended at a giddy height, his double trumpet-shaped creation clings to both ends of the shell, holding the building together more emphatically than the girders outside.
Standing beneath it, it's like the life-force of the space, swooping through, moving almost imperceptibly as wind blows through it, or the messy, sinewy guts and entrails, the corporeal interior ripped out in the name of progress.
Or it's a bridge, echoing the shape of the more famous one across the water outside, or a hand from a horror film stretching down to claim smaller, weaker life forms. All of these and more, it is beautiful, stunning, a winner.
Less successful is the external view of things. As you approach, you see glimpses of glossy red, teasingly incongruous in these quite derelict surroundings, blocking your view through the brickwork shell at some points and, inexplicably, not at others.
This is all fine. Up close, though, through each end, the red disappears into nothing, shrinking into the void of the building. It's an optical illusion, but one that's not quite magical enough. Too orifice-like, too much of the re-birth imagery about it, the wonder and the glory of what's inside is compromised by this rather underwhelming moment.
Despite the drama and the drop-dead beauty of it all, in the end more is less here. Kapoor's so lively intervention feels like a slightly empty gesture, one which is rescued only by its ravishing loveliness - which is, of course, where Taratantara rather leaves Gazza behind.
