The Arts

The Tanks

My most recent visit to the Tate Modern, led me to a number of exhibitions including Sage & Twist, International photographers-capture city life 1930-80, but the exhibition that I came to see, The Tanks. After inactivity for the past few decades, and a lengthy period of redevelopment, the spectacular oil tanks of the former power station have been transformed and returned for its new use-once again back to its original use, active with working components of a larger building. With my A-level art title of Space in mind, this seemed the perfect place to explore.

Inside the Tanks, were a number of artists creating different artworks, past and present, where the meeting of these and audiences would establish what the Tanks are.
One of my favourite artists in the Tanks was Suzanna Lacy, who created The Crystal Quilt. This experimental exploration was the culmination of The Whisper Minnesota Project, a three-year public artwork empowering and giving voice and visibility to older women. On May 10th 1987, Mothers day, Suzanne Lacy gathered 430 women over the age of 6- in Minneapolis shopping centre. Seated around tables decorated with a red, yellow and black cloth quilting pattern, creating The Crystal Quilt, an hour long live broadcast attended by more than 3,000 people. The quilt was an emblem of the traditional sharing of North American female experiences.

Yet it was Lis Rhodes Light Music that intrigued me the most. Light Music uses a range of media to explore the use of space and performance within cinema. Containing two projections that face one another in a smoke-filled room, the work is inhabited by the film's viewers, who cast shadows and become caught in its beams. The flickering black and white images reminded me of the era of Silent movies, the 1920's, in particular more currently the film The Artist. All you hear is the aural equivalent to the flickering patterns on the screen. The light and dark pass through the projector, read as an audio, therefore the film's sound is constructed directly from its visual image. Made in 1975, Light Music has been shown internationally, including in Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film. 

I was lucky enough to see the live project of the day going on-being Fifteen weeks of art in action, Haegue Yang's Dress Vehicles- performance sculptures activated by the audience.