KEY POINTS:
The creator of an inflatable artwork which killed two women when it lifted off from its moorings has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Dreamspace designer Maurice Agis, whose commissions over 40 years have included shows at the Barbican and New York's Lincoln Centre, was held for questioning when he attended an appointment yesterday at Charing Cross Police Station, in London.
His arrest follows the deaths of 68-year-old grandmother Elizabeth Collings and 38-year-old mother-of-two Claire Furmedge, who were killed when the inflatable reared up into the air, on a warm afternoon on July 23.
The women were among dozens of visitors to the colourful walk-in attraction which had been installed in Riverside Park at Chester-le-Street, Co Durham.
Mrs Furmedge, a radiographer, was visiting the park with her children Jessica, eight, and Emily, six, when the tragedy occurred. Rosie Wright, aged three, was also badly hurt.
Her life was saved by a passing anaesthetist who stabilised her before she was taken by helicopter to hospital in nearby Newcastle upon Tyne.
Dreamspace was first shown in Copenhagen in 1996 and had been received with enthusiasm by 250,000 visitors across Europe before the tragedy occurred.
It was celebrated as an accessible form of contemporary art.
Hundreds of people at a time entered the piece's maze-like structure. After removing their shoes, they donned capes and wandered around inflated walkways to specially-composed music and sounds.
But Durham Police are investigating whether hot weather on the day of the disaster may have warmed the air inside and, despite the attachment of extra ropes because of the heat, caused it to rear 150ft into air.
One woman fell 30ft onto a concrete path when Mr Agis' creation took off, while Dreamspace's labyrinth of coloured pods and tunnels was swept across a park.
After the tragedy, Mr Agis said that he would never again make anything like the vast, walk-in structure. His partner, Paloma Brotons, said at the time that the British sculptor was heartbroken.
"There was a team of us that helped to tie the structure to the ground, we even used more ropes because it was hot," she said. "We can't understand what's happened. Maurice is in mourning. He is in a terrible way. I doubt he will be able to talk about this for a very long time."
Mr Agis, who was born in London in 1931, trained at St Martin's School of Art and was exhibited amid his cutting-edge contemporaries at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the 1960s.
He was at the scene of the disaster, having helped to install his creation in the park by the River Wear.
Prior to the tragedy, he described the work as "surreal, magic, like swimming in a sea of changing colours".
His art, he said, was "my dialogue, my communication is part of an urban art culture, part of the urban environment. It's about finding a way into the social fabric of everyday life so as to breathe and blossom."
Det Supt Neil Milkin, of Durham Police, said: "Inquiries are continuing in this wide-ranging investigation.
"We are awaiting reports from the Health and Safety Executive's laboratory and it is likely to be summer next year before we are in a position to put a file before the Crown Prosecution Service."
A spokeswoman for Durham Police said later that Mr Agis, 74, had been bailed pending further inquiries.
- INDEPENDENT
