A Mixed Bag of Boxes
Until the 2nd April 2006 the large-scale work occupying the Turbine Room at Tate Modern in London is called “Embankment”. By way of short summary it is a landscape created from the casting of 14,000 various sized boxes and the piece was constructed by Rachel Whiteread. If you choose to enter the gallery from the millennium bridge side you might try to resist the urge to look over “Embankment” from the first floor window; with the benefit of hindsight I would urge you to principally enjoy the exhibit from any of the elevated vantage points.
When you actually enter the Turbine Room you immediately find yourself beneath the gang way which firstly obscures your view and secondly detrimentally affects the quality of light on the exhibit. Try to picture for one moment the sheer brightness of a high vaulted, airy room filled almost to the rafters in places with off white objects; now put a solid object (the gang way) over it and no additional lighting and the effect is that the first quarter of the landscape you pass assumes a rather dull and oppressive quality. When you pass out from under the gang way the change is quite remarkable and the aura is slightly surreal it is somewhat reminiscent of a Doctor Who parallel universe landscape where everything is white.
The shear size of “Embankment” in itself is remarkable and I can only begin to imagine the effort that must have gone into arranging the boxes; but it didn’t quite live up to description given either in the brochure or on the Tate Modern website. Both describe it as labyrinthesque with a maze of dead ends, arguably an intentional portrayal of modern day landscapes, but it simply didn’t live up to this promise except for perhaps the incredibly short sighted. It is laid out in a myriad of different shapes and pinnacles and banks but it became quite obvious that if you chose to follow a certain path you could accurately predict where you would end up on the other side, a fairly ineffective maze.
While on the surface 14,000 white squares in a room sounds dull it does have the effect of making you stop and look all around you as if it were a painting or photo and thus with anything like this the less prams, toddlers or miserable teenagers present the better. For that very reason, and after one circuit of the room, my preferred view was from the fist floor gang way which looks over the exhibit. From there you are not only above it but you can see it stretch out before you and above you.
For those of you who chose to go to other exhibits on other floors don’t forget to have a look out of the windows on your way up in order to gain yet another perspective on “Embankment”.
When you actually enter the Turbine Room you immediately find yourself beneath the gang way which firstly obscures your view and secondly detrimentally affects the quality of light on the exhibit. Try to picture for one moment the sheer brightness of a high vaulted, airy room filled almost to the rafters in places with off white objects; now put a solid object (the gang way) over it and no additional lighting and the effect is that the first quarter of the landscape you pass assumes a rather dull and oppressive quality. When you pass out from under the gang way the change is quite remarkable and the aura is slightly surreal it is somewhat reminiscent of a Doctor Who parallel universe landscape where everything is white.
The shear size of “Embankment” in itself is remarkable and I can only begin to imagine the effort that must have gone into arranging the boxes; but it didn’t quite live up to description given either in the brochure or on the Tate Modern website. Both describe it as labyrinthesque with a maze of dead ends, arguably an intentional portrayal of modern day landscapes, but it simply didn’t live up to this promise except for perhaps the incredibly short sighted. It is laid out in a myriad of different shapes and pinnacles and banks but it became quite obvious that if you chose to follow a certain path you could accurately predict where you would end up on the other side, a fairly ineffective maze.
While on the surface 14,000 white squares in a room sounds dull it does have the effect of making you stop and look all around you as if it were a painting or photo and thus with anything like this the less prams, toddlers or miserable teenagers present the better. For that very reason, and after one circuit of the room, my preferred view was from the fist floor gang way which looks over the exhibit. From there you are not only above it but you can see it stretch out before you and above you.
For those of you who chose to go to other exhibits on other floors don’t forget to have a look out of the windows on your way up in order to gain yet another perspective on “Embankment”.
posted by Ryan Fender at 03:52
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