Photographer’s Notes:

Those who know me know that Southbank is my fav hangout spot. The view of the Thames, fabulous cafe’s and restaurants, galleries, London’s historic and iconic bridges and structures like the London eye not forgetting the hidden secrets of the side streets are a few of the reasons. So when Unilever’s annual commission was unveiled at the Tate Modern in London on the 13th Oct 2009 I had to go scope it out. You should too.

Named “How it is” by the creator, Polish sculptor Miroslaw Balka, it dominates one half of the turbine hall space which is quite a feat to fill considering the vast space. I was greeted with this gigantic steel

structure that looks like a retro alien spaceship. Dubbed the “blackhole “ it’s raised 12ft off the ground, 98ft (30m) long, 43ft (13m) high and 33ft (10m) wide just to give you an idea of the size.

There were quite a few visitors and tourists going up the ramp, which some people seem to trip up on ‘cos it starts off a little high, except you go up the accessibility ramp on the left of the structure. Once at the top of the ramp all you see is people gradually fading into the darkness, so I bravely decided to embrace the experience and walk slowly into the darkness. You can’t see much, well that’s the art, a big black box, however it is slightly scary yet it’s scale is breath taking and the art concept is thought-provoking. As you walk around you may bump into a fellow oncoming wonderer or in my case surprisingly get felt up by someone trying to navigate the darkness, haha. When you hit the back of the structure you feel a soft velvet wall which is ideal as it absorbs light and is much thicker than using black paint which was my initial assumption of the interior.

Eventually your eye’s adjust slowly as you spend more time wondering around inside while surrounded by screaming kids running around and jumping to test the structure’s strength or people zombified by the darkness of the steel box.

I actually expected it to be much darker. The ambient light in that part of the turbine hall was less than near the entrance, however, shading the place off a little more and blocking off the ceiling windows would have helped increase the intensity of DARKNESS inside. The artist could have utilized the space a bit more like having another floor, having secret rooms or even dark silent disco room haha. Yep, I have a creative, vivid imagination lol, but with all that space inside adding a little extra would make it interactive, create a sense of adventure and bring people back to view it. Hey you may even be able to have/get a date in the dark lol, just my 2 cents.

It was good to see office workers come to visit the sculpture during their break. I wonder what people thought when they saw it, do they turn away, do they laugh, or pause to think about the deeper meaning of Balka’s box? What I take away from this is, initially when in a situation we think its soo bad and difficult just like entering the structure for the first time, but eventually when we stop to think about our problem we can reason it out and its easier to deal with which I think is synonymous to when our eye’s adjust to the darkness.

I pulled my camera out and took a few shots. The exhibition is up till 5th April 2010, will be back there to look round again soon. Meanwhile check out the pictures below. :)