Tate Modern

Popped over to the Tate Modern on Saturday afternoon to check out the new installation in the impressive Turbine Hall - more on a friends wish to see it than any personal interest, but anything that keeps you out of the pub for a an hour or so should be welcomed eh?

I think the phrase is underwhelming. A few slides strung rogether, some of which do run from the fourth floor down to the ground level, but they just seems a bit…….well……pointless really. Most of the awesome space isn’t used which I think is a waste, it’s just all a bit dull and redundant. This was far more affecting, and I think this is interesting (although I didn’t see it) unlike this effort. Now, granted that installations like Eliasson’s are far more dramatic and atmospheric - but for me that is a far more effective and ultimately memorable use of the enourmous space that the artists can play with. I recall stumbling out of the Sun Exhibit feeling that I’d been immersed in a hallucinatory agent orange drenched environment - and that has stayed with me. Other than attracting a horde of screaming, disruptive mini-droogs to shout and scream whilst their middle class parents smiled appreciatively at their precious little treasures - I fail to see any merit whatsoever. Was Alton Towers closed this weekend?

As a consolation and being on site I did make the effort to check out one of my favourite pictures:

Don’t ask me why I like this, it’s nothing I can nail down - I just do. The fact that Ernst apparently based it on the insane ravings of paranoic mental patient of Freud doesn’t bode well, but hey - it beats pointless kiddie slides in my book.

~ by mintyblonde on October 30, 2006.