Thursday, December 1, 2016

Tate Modern Exhibition - Southbank - London



I was blessed to have a long weekend in London from 24th to the 28th November 2016 to celebrate the occasion of my eldest daughter's marriage.  This gave me the opportunity during the weekend to make a brief visit, to an exhibition at Tate Modern of work by Louise Bourgeois.

It was fascinating although I do not pretend to understand the exhibits, I did learn more by following up my visit with some research and a visit to the Official Website.

Hopefully the few photos of the exhibits that I have taken and included here will make you interested to visit the Tate Modern Website or if you get the opportunity, visit the exhibition yourself.







Louise Bourgeois      Text courtesy of  Official Website

Feel the impact of Bourgeois’s intense psychological insight through the artworks in this display

Louise Bourgeois’s work is often autobiographical, while addressing universal experiences such as birth, death, love, loss and fear.

This exhibition brings together a selection of Bourgeois’s late works, alongside a small number of earlier pieces from her remarkable seven-decade career. She was born in Paris in 1911. Her parents ran a business restoring antique tapestries, which sparked her life-long interest in textiles. Though she initially studied mathematics and geometry at the Sorbonne, she soon changed direction and trained as an artist. In 1938 she moved to New York City, where she remained until her death in 2010.

Bourgeois returned again and again to a number of themes, though the materials she used to express them vary greatly. Her sculpture, drawing  and writing are characterised by an unflinching emotional honesty, as she continually retold and reworked the memories and stories that shaped her life.

Bourgeois kept written diaries and records. Often she would write down her thoughts and ideas on loose sheets of paper. She collected books on many topics, sometimes because she was inspired by their illustration plates, but also to study subjects such as philosophy and psychoanalysis. Bourgeois was herself in psychoanalysis for many years, and suffered from anxiety and insomnia for most of her life. For her, making art was another form of therapy that she could not live without.

Louise Bourgeois is the first artist to be presented in the new gallery dedicated to ARTIST ROOMS. Located on Level 4 of the Switch House, the space has been designed exclusively to present a programme of solo exhibitions of work by the forty artists in the ARTIST ROOMS collection.

More information content about the individual exhibits that I have shared photos of here and videos about the artists work can be found on the Official Website.

Tate Modern
A large oblong brick building with square chimney stack in centre of front face. It stands on the far side of the River Thames, with a curving white foot bridge on the left.
Tate Modern is located in Central London
Tate Modern
Location within Central London
Established2000; 16 years ago
LocationBankside
London, SE1
United Kingdom
Coordinates51.507625°N 0.098970°W
Visitors
4,712,581 (2015)[1][2]
DirectorFrances Morris
Public transit accessLondon Underground National Rail Blackfriars
Websitetate.org.uk/modern
Tate

N.B. The photographs of the exhibits I saw are my own work, but please visit the  Tate Modern - Official Website to learn more about each individual exhibit.

More information can be found via the following websites.


6 comments:

  1. I am sure I do not understand them. The important part was yo had a great weekend. Diane

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No neither do I but I try to keep an open mind about art. Thanks we had a fabulous family weekend celebrating.

      Delete
  2. I like the new extension to the Tate Modern but I have to say my understanding of some of the work in the Tate is pushed to its limits. I have not seen this exhibition but it isn't on my list of exhibitions to visit. What a great reason to be visiting London, hope the wedding all went well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I enjoy the Tate Modern but like you find some of art difficult to understand. Yes we had a fabulous family weekend celebrating, thanks.

      Delete
  3. I have to say this does not appeal to me and is not something I ever want to see. the world is full of ugly right now so going to a museum to see more ugly just is not what I want to do.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for visiting Travel Tales and taking the time to leave a comment. I really appreciate your support, which is a great encouragement to me and reading them is always a pleasure. All commenter's will receive a visit back from me and followers a follow back. I will respond to questions here but not reply to every individual comment due to time constraints, a problem we all have.