This year Turner Contemporary have this great sculpture, in place of a Christmas tree:
And here’s what Turner Contemporary have to say about it:
Visit Turner Contemporary this December and be inspired by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan’s alternative Christmas tree installation DOES THE ITERATIVE FIT on our South terrace. This temporary sculptural and audio artwork was commissioned by The Kings Cross Project and originally installed in Granary Square, London over Christmas 2017.
Tatham and O’Sullivan’s sculptures and installations often question the accepted or expected outcomes of contemporary art practice. DOES THE ITERATIVE FIT is a response to and critique of its original commission brief to design a Christmas tree for a busy public space. The resulting sculpture with accompanying soundtrack reimagines the behaviour and meaning of a public artwork and considers the functions that art is expected to perform within the public sphere. The commentary, voiced by an actor, relates the experiences of an art object out in the world, projected through speakers that double as brightly coloured branches.
We thought (inspired in part by this news article) – what if we put that in Plain English, so people can understand it? It’ll make the art more accessible, by helping people understand what they’re seeing. So, we’re going to help out Turner Contemporary (and more importantly, ordinary people in Margate) by translating everything the gallery publish for the next year.
Here’s Jacey’s simplified take on the text about the Christmas tree:
IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?
Tatham and O’Sullivan make sculptures and art pieces that rebel a bit against the ‘art world’.
Someone asked them to design an alternative Christmas tree to be shown in a busy public place.
They came up with this sculpture, which they called DOES THE ITERATIVE FIT?, roughly meaning IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?
Lots of people have fixed ideas about art in public places: we expect things like statues and sculptures to look a certain way.
The idea behind this ‘tree’ is that it doesn’t look like normal public art – and it doesn’t sound like it either. It’s meant to make us think about why we have those set ideas and whether art always has to look a certain way.
If you listen carefully, you’ll realise the brightly coloured ‘branches’ are actually speakers – and you’ll hear an actor talking about what it might be like to be a piece of art, out in the world, with people looking at it.
