Tate bringing new art to London

If only I lived in London.

"The subject of the weather has long shaped the content of everyday conversation. The eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson famously remarked ‘It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.’ "

It's an interesting exploration. Tate Modern has been prominently displaying works of conceptual art for some time now and this follows on in that tradition. The piece is playing on the apparent British 'obsession' with the weather and confronts those entering the gallery space - a huge hall that used to be home to a power station - with a new environment not unlike the setting of the sun. The artist Olafur Eliasson, from Denmark said,
"And the other thing I like [about weather] is the idea of it being unpredictable. It gives off a specific sense of time. You never have the same cloud again."
That's an interesting part of the exhibition I think as it forces a certain time on the viewer. You can't have a sense of it being noon, or cloudy in there, it has to be sundown or sunrise. It's an extremes situation forced onto the viewer, which doesn't make it any less interesting. In the same way people stepping off a long haul flight can be disorientated by the time zone, this will place a false atmosphere around the consumer.

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