Bankside revisited: as the first public event in May 2000, London Taxi drivers were invited to a party in the Turbine Hall as part of a clever marketing plan to raise Tate Modern's profile. Since then, what has been happening in London's newest public square, a destination that through the success of the Unilever Series has become a new gauge for public art?

Architectural Review, The, June, 2004 by Rob Gregory

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Editing ideas was also part of the process undertaken by Olafur Eliasson, when creating his installation The Weather Project. Having eliminated plans to make it rain and snow, to create an interior rainbow, and an ambitious plan to turn the Turbine Hall into a giant fridge, Eliasson became as interested in engaging with the institutional ideals of the Tate as with the space itself. So, while Munoz's work measured space, and Kapoor's visually measured forces. Eliasson chose to measure people through a survey of their perception of the weather. Through this he then set about creating an environment within the Hall that would play on experience and expectation--rather than the spectacle of the object.

This work, with its mirrored ceiling and burning sun, perhaps more than any other, allowed the hall-as-square to truly come into its own, with over two million people visiting the space, to dwell, look and lie down. Seeking refuge from the reality of winter, as if passing time on a lazy summer's eve, people reclined, some slept, and amorous couples embraced, in the haze of the warm sunset, gazing into the mysterious sky above at faint, distant reflections of themselves. Summer certainly came early last year--so what we may ask will next winter bring? There is much more to this space than meets the eye. What, for example, could it sound like? Bruce Nauman's installation opens in October.

COPYRIGHT 2004 EMAP Architecture
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
 

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