Roger Hiorns combines anti-psychotics and military surveillance at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art© David Grinly
Before that, he'd appeared to set fire to a drain at Tate Britain, and he returned to minor acts of arson at this year's British Art Show, scorching a metal bench in a blaze occasionally tended to by a naked chap.
So for an artist rarely predisposed to minimalism, the large-scale entrapments of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art's Sculpture Show – which counts Ron Mueck's monumental A Girl and works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth among the highlights when it opens on December 17 – are a perfect setting.
This is the first time the work has appeared in the UK© David Grinly
In it, he takes two engines from US Air Force surveillance planes and endows them with three types of anti-psychotic drugs.
The stashes, the accompanying info insists, are "inaccessible to the viewer", forming the hallucinogenic core of an installation gifted to the Arts Council Collection by the artist, London gallery Corvi Mora and the Henry Moore Foundation.
"Throughout its 65-year history the Arts Council Collection has been unique in consistently championing the most progressive art being made in Britain," says the organisation's leader, Caroline Douglas.
"We see Roger Hiorns very much within this distinguished tradition, and I am proud to be working with the Gallery of Modern Art to show this major work for the first time outside the US."
Current Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce and nominee Karla Black also feature on a line-up for the show which will make it a must-see during its run until June 2012.
