+++*

Symbolic Forest

A homage to loading screens.

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London Weekend Blogging: Big Box, Little Box

Or, visiting the Tate

Deciding to do something cultural whilst in the Big City, I visited Tate Modern to see Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment, her Turbine Hall installation made up of thousands of plastic casts of cardboard boxes.

As I’d visited the work warehouse earlier in the day, my first reaction was: “this isn’t a very neat warehouse”. My second reaction was “ooh, I could just do with a cup of tea”, because the stacks and stacks of white boxes make me think of a giant pile of sugar lumps.* One leak in the roof, and the whole thing would just dissolve.

It was good to see, though, that kids love Embankment. They were all over it, playing hide and seek, darting in and out between piles of boxes. It’s good to have art that you can get inside and move around in, and use for your own purposes like that. The kids might not be thinking about the plight of London’s homeless, but Art** isn’t just for the artist’s purposes. It’s what you make of it that counts.

* In fact, I’m tempted to make a model replica of Embankment entirely out of sugar cubes and starch paste.

** With a capital A, of course.