Tate Modern

Test Site is an installation by Carsten Holler of five impressive slides in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. There was a constant flow of people using the slides. No one could resist, from teenagers to professionals still in their business suits, everyone was queing up for a go! Holler sees this as a prototype for an even larger installation, in which slides could be introduced throughout London. She has undertaken many projects that invite visitor interaction, such as Flying Machine (1996) that hoists the user through the air, Upside-Down Goggles (1994/2001) that modify vision, and Frisbee House (2000) - a room full of Frisbees. Holler is interested in exploring communal human experience, ‘questioning human behaviour, perception and logic and offering the possibility for self-exploration in the process’.

Aswell as the permanent exhibitions I also visited David Smith: Sculptures. David Smith (1906-65) is one of the greatest American sculptors of the twentieth century and this exhibition celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of his death, showing the largest selection of his work ever shown in Europe.
His pieces are characterised by the use of industrial materials, especially welded iron and steel and the exploration of an open, linear structure.
Talking of steels as a medium Smith says, ‘What it can do in arriving at form economically, no other material can do. The metal itself possesses little art history. What associations it possesses are those of this century: power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction and brutality.’

For more information and live webcam views of the slides visit www.tate.org.uk/modern