The Tate Modern located on the South side of the Thames, across from The City, is an extension of the Tate Gallery. As the name implies, it’s focus is modern art. Given that the building is a 1930′s power plant, the setting actually is ideal for housing.
The Tate Modern has eight floors of exhibit space. The main hall is the Turbine Hall, where as the name implies, the hall used to be occupied by power turbines used to generate power for London. The Turbine Hall is vast with ceiling equivalent six stories. This allows for some really large exhibits, but when not occupied by any sizable exhibit, is really just a vast empty space. Yet on this trip, the sole exhibit in the Turbine Hall was one long crack in the floor.
At first glance you may think that the crack is just painted on the floor and that no one would deliberately produce a crack in a concrete floor. At least not a crack that runs the whole width of the Gallery. But upon close inspection, sure enough, there was a gap and it does go down about two feet into the floor. Of course everyone visiting the gallery was getting creative on how to photograph the crack. As you can see from the image from above, I went with the super human element…. so much strength in my arms that I can pull the floor apart. In another twist I created the impression of hanging of a cliff, as you can see in the image below.
As it was late in the afternoon when I went to the Tate Modern, I was feeling a bit hungry and ventured to the seventh floor to take advantage of the restaurant. There, you are in for a neat surprise as the views from the the seventh floor, looking out on to The City are amazing.
In all, if Modern Art is your thing, a visit to the Tate Modern should be on your list of places to visit while in London.
More information:
Web Address: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
Address:
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Telephone: (44) 020 7887 8888
Open Sunday – Thursday 10.00–18.00
Open Friday and Saturday 10.00–22.00
Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15)
Map:
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