When Tate Modern opened six years ago, it was decided that a single artist would be selected every year to create a site-specific installation in the Turbine Hall. And so it was that a new date was added to the cultural calendar. Carsten Höller’s effort is officially unveiled on Monday although you can see it under construction now.
Höller has transformed the space into a playground. Visitors will be encouraged to try out five slides: the highest is 58 metres, going from the top to the bottom of the Turbine Hall. “It is art and not art,” Höller said. “You can look at these slides for purely sculptural reasons, like encountering work by Henry Moore and Brancusi.” Or you can jump on and get sliding.
The Turbine Hall is a commission that is bound to make an impact — and not just in terms of publicity. Tinkeringwith scale, as the commissioned artists have done, is fresh and exhilarating. “Do you dominate it, or are you dominated by it?” asked Louise Bourgeois, the first artist to be commissioned. Her three Tolkienish towers and the giant metallic spider set the first benchmark. The stakes have been steadily raised ever since.
The choice seems to come down to that between making one enormous thing — as Anish Kapoor did with his gargantuan red trumpet— or replicating thousands of smaller things. Rachel Whiteread went for this option last year, building a sort of postmodern Persopolis out of the white casts of 14,000 packing cases.
The most successful installation so far was by Olafur Eliasson. In a museum that has become a popular alternative to the park, his 2003 Weather Project with its huge sun offered a fine solution on a wet day — and set a precedent for creating pieces in which the public plays an integral part. Höller has followed his lead.
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Tracey Emin, artist
I liked the Louise Bourgeois. I thought it was really romantic. If you were having a love affair you could say to someone: “I’ll meet you under the spider.” It’s not often in life that you can say that.
Bruce Nauman’s sound piece with the voices, the way he used the whole space, was great. I didn’t like Rachel’s [Whiteread] to look down on but I loved it to walk through. If I put something in there it would probably be one of my giant wooden constructions. I’ve got one sculpture that’s 90ft (27m) long and I don’t get the chance to show it often. (Tracey Emin: Works 1963- 2006 is published by Rizzoli)
Sandy Nairne, director, National Portrait Gallery
It’s impossible to think of a favourite, each has been so distinctive in its own way. I think I’ve been most intrigued by the Bruce Nauman installation. The idea of using sound and the pinpoint accuracy of the sound linked over that space, it was really wonderful.
I suppose the test is to ask would I like to see them again, and I would. Now I’m at the National Portrait Gallery I’m constantly dealing with small spaces. Just every now and again having a really large-scale piece is terrific.
I’d like to see more dance in the Turbine Hall, like the wonderful Merce Cunnningham performance, which was part of the Olafur Eliasson installation. What’ll be exciting is when the next, younger generation of artists get given the chance, such as Simon Starling or Mike Nelson, or even painters like Jenny Saville.
Mark Jones, director, V&A
My favourites were the Bruce Nauman and the Olafur Eliasson. The sound piece was just wonderful and it seems very clever to me that something with no physical presence could fill that enormous space. I think it showed that the range of art is always wider than you’d imagine it to be. The Olafur Eliasson was good because it was just so cool.
Charles Saumarez Smith, director, National Gallery
I still haven’t forgotten the extraordinary impact of the first Louise Bourgeois installation and that suddenly London had a totally new space for the display of works of art on a scale that I had previously seen only in Bilbao. I have admired them all, with the possible exception of the Bruce Nauman, which left me unmoved.
Richard Wentworth, artist
I loved the Bruce Nauman. It was non-spectacular, fabulously economic in every sense, terribly funny but also chilling. The thing about the Turbine Hall is that it’s the definitive public space. It’s almost processional. You go into the Tate from the public realm, then you’re in another kind of public realm. You have a strong sense of how your individuality changes as you go in.
It’s an incredibly sophisticated thing to handle and a lot of artists can’t handle it. The primary requirement is that you’ve got to deal in spectacle, and that’s a trap. The trick is to detain people, do something that’s still in your head afterwards. It’s a demanding thing to be asked to do — like, would you like to be the ringmaster for a night? Damien Hirst would be interesting because he’s a natural art director — he understands a much bigger picture. He’s a professional “look at me” kind of guy. We should see whether he can pull it off.
Ekow Eshun, artistic director, ICA
People come to see the space as much as they do the work — it’s a spectacle in itself. You walk down into it and you get a sense of descending into a canyon of vast volume and it’s quite exciting. It’s actually really hard to produce good work in that space. It’s not a matter of: ‘You’re a great artist, you can fill the space,’ it’s more: ‘Can you create a spectacle?’
I’d love to see an artist like James Turrell filling it. He works with light, drenching a space in orange or blue, and it will feel like you’ve found yourself in the depths of the ocean or in the desert. He creates these dizzying, disorientating, dazzling spaces. I’d like to see what he could do.
Grayson Perry, artist
The bridge makes it tricky. It’s almost like a rood screen with an altar behind it. It’s an obvious parallel that contemporary art is becoming a kind of secular substitute for the search for religiosity and spirituality. I’d like to see a piece that somehow played on that idea of visiting the art gallery like you might a cathedral. I suppose it’s a slightly mocking idea. So many people go because it’s the Tate Modern, rather than because they like art. Maybe I’d like to see a piece that worked as a beautiful sculpture but also investigated that sociology of the kind of destination museum.
Nigel Coates, head of architecture, RCA
The one I liked best was the sun. It became a sublime space. It changed the way it was used. What I’d like to see in there is a street. It would depend what the street was expressing but I’d play with the façades and the overscale. It has the scale of Piccadilly Circus, of The Mall, of Brasilia, and that’s never really been played with.
