Most people will be familiar with art from the Tate Modern’s Unilever Series whether they have seen them up close or not – pieces on a grand scale like Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project and Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds tend to make the national news and claim a space in the public consciousness.
As such, any artist taking on the task of creating the next gargantuan artwork in the Unilever series has some big boots to fill, and will be quite aware that this may be the defining piece of their career. The most recent artist to step up to the stage is Berlin art filmmaker Tactia Dean. So how to use film to complement and comment on this big space? How to do so in a way that will make people think?
Dean has gone about the task by projecting a recording onto a gigantic white monolith, standing 13 metres high, at the end of the Turbine Hall. The hall is darkened to ensure that the piece, entitled FILM is the main focus of attention. FILM can be seen a a portrait of the whole concept of analogue film making. Made using a Cinemascope lens turned at a 90 degree angle, the recording uses many of the techniques pioneered by early cinema, such as glass matt painting, mirroring, and masking. The effect is one of striking colour and strong sense of layered imagery.
You can see FILM at London’s Tate Modern until 11th March 2012.
