Exhibition of the week: The Tanks: Art in Action, Tate Modern, London SE1

 

Laura McLean-Ferris
Thursday 19 July 2012 20:14 BST
Comments
Sung Hwan Kim's installation is the star piece at the exhibition
Sung Hwan Kim's installation is the star piece at the exhibition

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

What strange world has opened up beneath Tate Modern? Through a sliding door at one side of the Turbine Hall, one can enter the spaces that were used as oil tanks in the old power station.

Here are more raw, beautiful concrete rooms, developed by Herzog & de Meuron into permanent spaces for live art, a bold move that might transform museum practice.

Tate brings the ephemeral and performative into museum history by showing two works from the collection, Lis Rhodes's Light Music (1975) and Suzanne Lacy's The Crystal Quilt (1985-7), but Sung Hwan Kim's installation – the first Tanks commission – is the star piece: Accompanied by soulful songs, Kim's poetic films are plotted in the dark among lights and sculptures, floatily considering love, companionship, parenthood, power, oppression, migration and political responsibility.

The space looks like the remnants of a lost civilisation as much as the site for a potential new one.

(020 7887 8888; tate.org.uk) to 28 Oct

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in