Morning:
8°c
Adding some Polish to the Turbine Hall
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent29 Jan 2009
Polish artist Miroslaw Balka will be the next to transform the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
The commission will be the first public artwork in Britain by the 50-year-old, although he currently has an exhibition in the commercial White Cube gallery in Mason's Yard, Piccadilly.
Helen Sainsbury, the curator for the Tate show, said: "He's an artist the Tate has been interested in for some years.But as time has progressed his work has really begun to take on a monumental scale. It's a way of thinking that lends itself to the Unilever commission."
Balka's work is influenced by his Catholic upbringing as well as the fractured history of his native country. In recent years, he has focused on the Holocaust as a permanent scar on the collective memory. The son of a tombstone engraver, he lives in Warsaw and the nearby town of Otwock, both of which were deeply affected by what happened to their Jewish communities.
"Polish history is incredibly important to him," Ms Sainsbury added.
Ms Sainsbury said Balka was chosen for his art. But she acknowledged that the public might be particularly interested now that there had been wider contact with Polish people.
The series of commissions sponsored by Unilever was launched when Tate Modern opened in 2000. The Turbine Hall has already featured several international artists. Doris Salcedo, from Colombia, made a giant crack, German artist Carsten Höller made spiralling slides and Olafur Eliasson, of Denmark, made an image of a setting sun.
No details are yet available of Balka's plans.H is work will be on show from 13 October until 5 April next year.
