A member of staff looks on at Brain Forest Quipu by artist Cecilia Vicuna at Tate Modern
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)Two enormous woven “spiderwebs” studded with bones and pottery salvaged from the Thames are the latest works to take centre stage in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
The sculptures by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuna are constructed from dyed rope and wool and hang 27-metres down from the ceiling.
Her work for the annual Hyundai Commission is the latest large scale work to be installed following exhibits by names including Ai WeiWei who famously scattered millions of ceramic sunflower seeds across its floor.
Other prominent entries have included Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project which filled the vast space with an artificial sun and last year’s art show when Anicka Yi set floating robots hovering around the room.
Vicuna’s skeletal sculptures, which are bleached white, are called Brain Forest Quipu and are inspired by an ancient Andean tradition where knots are tied in long cords to communicate information.
Curator Catherine Wood said the hall had been transformed into “a live studio” for the last five weeks as they built the enormous structures.
She said: “There is a circular sort of spider web structure at each end of the Turbine Hall for rigging and she has been making material elements that are hanging off that circular structure.
“They reach all 27 metres the height of the turbine hall from the ceiling to the floor.”
Vicuna enlisted the help of women from the local Latin American community to go mud-larking to help collects items for the works.
Ms Wood said: “They did some days of mudlarking on the side of the river so they found clay pipes and bones and bits of pottery and some of those have been woven into the structure.
“It is absolutely incredible what you can find there. Cecilia has a relationship with London, she was here in the 1970s she used to spend time walking along the river Thames and she is very interested in water conservation and water sustaining life as part of the indigenous mythology in the Andes where she comes from so that relationship to the river is very important.”
She said she hoped visitors would walk through and under the textile works, which she described as having “that awe-inspiring feeling of ancient monuments”, which also include fitted speakers playing music and field recordings from nature.
She said: “It really encourages you to slow down and spend time with it. It is like watching the clouds or something and every time I look up at this sculpture I see something different.”
* The Hyundai Commission: Brain Forest Quipu by Cecilia Vicuna is at Tate Modern from Tuesday, October 11 to April 16.
