REVIEW: Tate Modern Extension (Switch House), London

I finally had some time this week to go and explore the new extension to the Tate Modern which opened a couple of weeks ago. The extension (dubbed 'Switch House') provides another ten floors worth of gallery space to the landmark contemporary gallery.

I have to say on approach, the new extension looks spectacular. It blends in surprisingly well with the existing venue but looks iconic and unique in its own right. It certainly will provide architecture and photography lovers with resourceful new inspiration.

I entered through the new extension and found myself pretty lost to begin with. I was a little disorientated as to where the new building started and where the old site met. But after a little consolidation and aimless wandering (mainly back and forth through the shiny new gift shop) I decided to explore my way up the Switch House one floor at a time.

If you're seeking actual artwork, there are three floors worth of new and old material. I have to admit, gallery-wise, the extension feels much smaller on the inside than it first appears on the outside once you've orientated yourself. As a frequent Tate visitor, I noticed that a notable portion of the artwork in the new galleries was work I'd seen from other branches of the Tate or from previous exhibitions. Despite this, the Switch House galleries are light, open and very inviting and host a different feel to the existing Tate galleries.

After exploring the art galleries, I was recommended to visit the top floor viewing level. This is probably one of the main attractions to the venue other than seeing the art, as a huge proportion of visitors were waiting to take lifts up to the tenth floor. Unfortunately the lifts are all rather small and don't seem to adequately accommodate the demand of visitors going up to the viewing level, leaving many like me braving ourselves to scale the ten flights of stairs instead (although granted, I had already conquered four out of the ten floors at this point). What I found curious on my way up was that the other six floors of the building were still very much empty. So keep this in mind if you're planning to visit. My guess is that the building is still very much a work in progress and they wanted to open as soon as possible. As I mentioned earlier, there were three floors of artwork and the ground floor hosts the gift shop and cafe.

So once I'd huffed and puffed my way up the tenth floor, the view up top is definitely worth the hike. The views across London are fantastic, and you're able to look straight across the Thames. It's also pleasantly not as crowded as you'd expect it to be judging by the amount of people taking lifts up.

All in all I am very excited at the prospect of this new extension and I think it will offer a huge potential of new opportunities. In it's current state, the building is certainly not yet finished or full to capacity but it's definitely worth a visit.

REVIEW: [Mona Hatoum/Performing for the Camera] @ Tate Modern

Mona Hatoum (4 May - 21 August 2016)
Performing for the Camera (18 February - 12 June 2016)
Tate Modern, London

I popped down to Tate Modern recently for the Mona Hatoum exhibition and whilst I was there, I also had a look around the photography and performance exhibition 'Performing for the Camera'.

Mona Hatoum has been one of my favourite artists since I first started taking art seriously at A Level. Her work commands your attention and at times has a very confrontational presence; it's unsettling, it's visceral and yet poetic too. I have seen a select few pieces of her work over the years, but I was really looking forward to seeing a whole exhibit devoted to her practice.

One of my personal highlights was the installation "Light Sentence" (as in prison sentences), as often Hatoum's work displays political and social undertones. In between a barricade of small cages stacked on top one another, a single light bulb swings in the centre. The projected light from the bulb creates an encompassing surrounding shadow cast around the entire room, transforming it into a 'prison-like' chamber. I think what really worked so well about this piece was the subtle movement of the shadows panning across the walls. The light bulb not only swings like a pendulum, but also moves slowly up and down and the consequent movement of the shadows on the wall makes you feel like you are moving - or swaying. It creates a sense of unsteadiness. The other obvious association I immediately made was feeling like I was in an interrogation room. We've all seen scenes like this in film, where a character wakes up in a dark room, a sinister bulb swings erratically and reveals the character's predicament under confinement or capture. There was something dreamy or illusive about the shadows creating an isolated cell, in comparison to the actual physical barricade in the middle of the room. It felt like being in the point of view of someone slightly hazy.

Another piece I really enjoyed for it's simplicity is '+ and -' (1994/2004). A circular container of sand has a rotating beam that simultaneously smooths and rakes the sand. This is described as a constant process of making and unmaking, a balance of two processes doing and undoing at the same time. I just found this to be really poetic but articulated in such a simple way.



As I mentioned I was at Tate Modern for the Mona Hatoum exhibition, but then I noticed the photography exhibition on and decided to take a look. I really enjoyed this exhibition too. It deconstructs performative acts for photography and allows us to see some of the outtakes or additional shots leading up an iconic image.

"Serious performance art, portraiture, or simply posing for a photograph? What does it mean to perform for the camera? The exhibition explores two forms, looking at how performance artists use photography and how photography in itself is a performance."

This exhibition featured some obvious names in the realm of performance and photography including Charles Ray, Yves Klein, Martin Parr, Erwin Wurm and Ai Wei Wei just to name a few. I really enjoyed this exhibition. I think that it offered a different perception of the artists involved - especially the process and technique to which they choose to use photography to capture an image or an artwork. Especially now where photography is such an accessible and convenient channel of documentation and creativity - it lends itself to some great possibilities.

REVIEW: [Blackout] WEYA @ Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham

As part of the World Event Young Artists Festival in Nottingham, the majority of art venues and galleries were getting involved in this huge event, with exclusive performances and showcases from a wide variety of artists. Nottingham Contemporary hosted the sensory experience of Blackout, described as "a rare opportunity to explore the potential of our minds. With sensory limitations placed on the artists and audience, cutting edge musicians play anonymously and are never revealed in the pitch black...leaving the crowd to personally explore the sensory interplay between their imagination and the music."

This sounded like a fantastic method of heightening senses, and producing an unusual platform to experience music and visual art. As with any type of artwork of this kind, there is always a trepidation in not knowing what to expect. The programme stated that the artist playing would also remain unknown and therefore there was no way of knowing what to prepare for, what may lie beyond the darkness.

When it came to actually entering the darkened space, ushered in one by one, the intensity of the dark is quite intimidating. I don't think anyone nearly expects darkness that is so pitch black that you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. I realised that as soon as I entered the room and couldn't see, I was reaching out in front of me for someone, anyone. I felt comforted when I could feel my fingers brush across a complete stranger's back. There's an odd sense of reassurance. The expanse of black seemed so vast, and yet you feel trapped in a bubble, unable to reach anyone else, even though you can hear people around you. I think the most unnerving sensation throughout all of this is the sense of displacement. You cannot locate yourself in relation to anyone else or the space. You have no idea exactly how many people are sharing the space with you, and how close or far away they all are. It is rather disorientating. After a short period, as more and more viewers were entering, you could hear people sitting down, and I felt uneasy about what the appropriate behaviour was in this circumstance. I didn't know whether I was expected to sit, stand, walk, regardless that at this point I was much more comfortable standing still. I found that when I actually decided to sit down,  I felt a sense of relief. The ground seemed to give me a better sense of where I was, where I could sit and slowly move my arms around me. My biggest concern was whether people would bump or step into you unexpectedly, but surprisingly that didn't happen. Perhaps everyone was staying still.

REVIEW: [Yayoi Kusama Retrospective] @ Tate Modern, London

Tate Modern recently revealed its new retrospective for the renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.

"Her art has an almost hallucinatory intensity that reflects her unique vision of the world, whether through a teeming accumulation of detail or the dense patterns of polka dots that have become her signature. The incessant quality of this gesture is both obsessive and meditative.

In the late 1990s, Kusama returned to making room size installations. In her installations, this image of bourgeois stasis is turned into something surreal and uncanny. All the room and furnishing covered with sticker spots which glow. The polka dot can be the visual shorthand signifying her hallucinatory visions. Covering in a room in psychedelic polka dots might be her attempt to visualise and restage the experience of her own hallucinatory episodes, during which she senses the physical world overtaken by endlessly repeated forms. Her representation of her inner world results in an installation that is fantastical and potentially unsettling. Spots are more readily experienced as interruptions of our own field of vision rather than a surface motif.

I'm Here But Nothing (2000) by Yayoi Kusama

I'm Here But Nothing (2000) by Yayoi Kusama

Her piece 'Infinity Mirror Room' is a depiction of infinite space. Reflecting surfaces has become a recurring element in her work. Large scale environments that viewers can walk into and explore. She proposes an experience for the infinite, inviting the viewer to suspend his or her sense of self -accompanying Kusama on her ongoing journey of self-obliteration." -Tate Modern