My god, it's full of star

I trotted along the the Tate Modern this afternoon to take a look at The Weather Project.

If you haven't heard of it already, the Tate Modern is a converted power station, now a gallery of modern art, just a little ways south of St. Pauls cathedral, reachable via the infamous, no-longer-bouncy (trust me I've tried) Millennium Bridge. One of the gallery's most notable features is it's truely vast entrance way, through the aptly named "Turbine Hall". It really is a cavernous arena, all the more impressive for containing the Unilever (I strongly dislike this sort of branding, but I can't deny the end results) series of commissions, many of which have attempted to fill the considerable amount of space at hand. This latest work is no exception.

It's really little more than a large acrylic semi-circle and a great many mirrors and lights. Oh, there's also fine mist pumped throughout. Naturally that description doesn't begin to do the end results any justice. I took my digital camera in tow and you can see the results at the end of this post. Please note that said pictures show up my sad limitations as a photographer, but I enjoyed taking them, which is all that's supposed to matter. Anyway, the finished work is something quite unusual. Whilst the obvious spectacle of the thing is undeniably impressive, what was even more interesting was it's effect on the crowd come to observe it. Whilst it looked like a strange form of sun worship, a large part of the attraction was the mirrors overhead (which appear to near double the already considerable height of the hall). Several groups were taking a great deal of delight in lying on their backs forming a variety of geometrical shapes. Others were content to simply lie on their backs and gaze upwards.

What struck me was that although the whole flash mob fad seems to have played itself out, this would have been the perfect venue for it. I wonder how difficult a flash mob is to organise...? Hmm...

Pretty pictures follow. These are largely untouched, although in a couple of cases I enhanced the brightness and contrast a little, and a couple of others I rotated 180 degrees (you can tell when the camera appears to be looking down at the sun). Oh, if you look closely you can see me in a couple of crowd shots. Not that you'd probably want to, of course, but you can anyway.