The Unilever Series

The Unilever Series began in 2000 as part of a five-year, £1.25 million sponsorship by Unilever of an annual art commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

Test Site - Carsten Holler

Test Site is the seventh commission for the Turbine Hall. It is an experimental project, using the characteristics of the hall –height, space and a vast audience, gathered by the museum. A hypothesis Holler has been working on for some time is the effect of sliding; could sliding become part of our everyday lives?

Holler’s work often involves human behaviour and he invites the audience to relinquish their dependence and comfort on the familiar.

“Slides deliver people quickly, safely and elegantly to their destinations… they’re also a device for experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness.” –Holler

Embankment – Rachel Whiteread

Embankment was the seventh commission for the Unilever Series. Whiteread’s intervention comprises thousands of white, plaster casts of cardboard boxes pilled high throughout the hall.

Whiteread’s aim was to make the Turbine Hall feel like a warehouse, an intriguing response for a place that was once an industrial building but now a museum. Artists like Judd have explored the idea of mass production and its impersonal nature. At first glance Whiteread’s work may have a similar feel but on closer inspection each cast box still has the imprints of human use in the forms of dents and markings from the original boxes.

The title of the piece refers to the proximity to the Thames embankment and the way the boxes are stacked, forming a series of barriers. “An embankment is something which is built to hold back water or to support a road or railway over low ground. I thought of it as something that is built up, and built up out of other materials.”

As you walk into the Turbine Hall the scale of the instillation is immediately apparent, making the people appear insignificant in the colossal hall.

The Weather Project – Olafur Eilasson

Eliasson views the weather – wind, sun and rain as one of the few fundamental encounters with nature that can still be experienced within the city. “Every city mediates its own weather. As inhabitants, we have grown accustomed to the weather as mediated by the city. This takes place in numerous ways… experiences, such as the television weather forecast, to more direct and tangible experiences, like simply getting wet while walking down the street.” –Eliasson

In the Weather Project Eliasson brings a part of London into the building and, through their experience and memory of the work, viewers take a part of it back out into the city.

This instillation encourages the viewer to explore their own experience with the weather. Eliasson allows the viewer to see the way in which the work is constructed. This encourages them to ask themselves why they might appreciate the instillation but not the natural weather they experience every day.