Seedy beach
(Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower seed installation in the Tate Modern (with close up of seed): London, UK)
Just a quick one to show you one of the things I saw yesterday. Here are the millions of ceramic sunflower seeds created for this exhibition in the Tate Modern’s turbine hall. Of course, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding it and if you haven’t experienced the delights of London’s constant media coverage, here you are: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11551085. It has been quite the discussion and I have to say that I felt quite mutinous there too, but we can push that discussion aside for the moment.
The seeds themselves are beautifully individual. I was allowed to see only seven or eight individual seeds at close quarters as a barrier has been set up several feet from the beginnings of the seed covered beach. A staff member held out her palm of seeds for my friend Tania and I to touch and I was able to take this photograph. At this stage, I cannot reveal if I was allowed to keep one. The art piece was a spectacle indeed; a massive undertaking with the seeds (although seemingly twice the size of real ones) appearing remarkably realistic. I was overwhelmed with the uniformity and greyness of the entire piece, and had to remind myself that each one was completely unique. The experience would have been ten times more rewarding if we could have gamboled through the dunes instead of looking over the deserted plain from afar, raked to a perfect flat platform.
– Today Rosie is taking stock of things in London, UK –
I read about it from our local Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao the other
day. Oh, it is in Tate Modern. I didn’t pay much attention to the news though, I remember the news also mentioned that the authority prohibit
people stepping on it because there were people slipped on it.
No picture shown, I didn’t imagine how is it. However, I did ask how
much time the artist spent in making the sunflower seeds? Well, it needs
a lot of patience and belief? And also how did he convince people of his idea? What do you think.
How long to make? Two years and a team of artisans, I heard! To be honest, I liked it and I would have enjoyed it more as an interactive piece. Part of me was ready to run into the seeds but one look at the brick wall of a security guard made me decide that being dragged out might end up in painful memories. There would be something delicious about being banned from the Tate Modern though, don’t you agree?
100 000 000 seeds in total. That’s a number to think about!