When the Tate modern re hung a lot of the pieces a couple of years back, I was really disappointed. Bizarrely, they seemed to have gone for the coffee shop option; crowding lots of paintings into a small space to make it look quirky. Which is fine when you aren’t looking at actual art, but not in a gallery. This exhibition restored my faith, it really captured the idea of pop art. Whole rooms were given over to a concept, the space was wonderfully manipulated so you felt like you were in a completely new gallery.

You enter and are faced with the iconic image of Jeff Koons bunny, and a giant Manga character squirting milk from her balloon shaped breasts. To be fair that is a pretty strong start. From there you are led through, Andy Warhols iconic images, synonymous with the pop art movement. As you make your way through the maze of rooms there are more wonderful things to encounter. I think my favourite, was the room entirely covered in gold foil with Leo Castelli’s eighties hip hop and black power posters, viewed to a soundtrack of old skool hip hop. To be honest I could have stayed in that room, danced about like a idiot and been quite content. But every room had it’s own drawn and novelty.

Every so often there were side rooms with the doors closed off, given over to the more pornographic side of pop art. The Jeff Koons room was hysterical, in the centre you are faced with a bigger than life size sculpture of Jeff and his porn star wife in mid mount . This is surrounded by huge images of Jeff and his lady from the Made in Heaven series, the most gloriously cheesy porn images I have ever seen. These high colour, high gloss photos tower over the viewer as you move around the centre piece. Jeff Koons pieces turn himself into the commodity, explicitly so as he places himself in the context of pornography.

You then go through to another room bedecked with iconic Keith Haring graffiti and blasting out yet more 80’s tunes, creating a mock up of the Haring’s Pop Shop. Here faced with old t shirt designs and products, the relationship between pop art and mass culture is evident. In fact there is also a shop within the exhibition space selling recreations of the artists famous t-shirts. It’s hard to tell whether this is an ironic nod, or a commercial venture. But I have a feeling true pop artists would probably approve of both.

The whole exhibition culminates in the embodiment of commoditisation and art, the final room is filled with the works of Takashi Murakami. These pieces are crammed with images of modern culture. From a perspex box diamonds embedded in the white gold representation of a Pepsi can wink at the viewer. While the soundtrack of Turning Japanese plays from the lcd screen where a costumed Kirsten Dunst dances through the streets of Tokyo.

All and all this exhibition is high colour and high sound. Half the rooms seem to have their own soundtrack, or maybe that was just the memory I took from it. I loved the use of music, so many galleries are quiet spaces , not loud and boisterous but that’s exactly what pop art was and is. It’s unapologetic and brash.
The exhibition get’s busy, very busy, which fits with the mood of the space but can get frustrating.  If you can go into the exhibition on the opposite side of the floor; Pure Beauty. In comparison it offers you a quiet, curious and intriguing collection as well as the opportunity to learn the rules to the choose a carrot  game. It’s a nice contrast from the in your face quality of Pop Life.

You can find out more about both exhibitions on the Tate Modern website.

Having newly acquired a Tate membership card, I thought it was about time that I went and used it, so me and the knife rack pottered over to the Tate Britain to look at the Richard Long exhibition; Heaven and Earth.

Richard Long’s work draws on his love of nature and walking, his pieces cover photography, sculpture and written work. To give a very brief, while walking he will create sculptures from the those items around him, these often take the form of lines or circles. Sometimes it will be to map out a journey, he will place a stone, somewhere on each day of his walk. One piece which caught me eye, he removed daisies in a field so they formed an X in the grass. These sculptures are photographed and their location and date documented. Other works are in the form of lists, detailing what he has seen, or heard on a walk, or the distance and location. One of the most dramatic rooms in the exhibition, were sculptures, where he had collected stones and created geometric shapes on the floor of the gallery, Mimicking the work he creates outside.

Thankfully on the day we went the gallery was relatively empty, as there is an extremely tranquil atmosphere in Long’s work. I think this links into the calm feeling that one experiences when trekking across the wilderness, the ability to walk for days and not see a single person, car, or house. His work is both transient and permanent. Some pieces, such as the ‘Two Lines of Water’ photographed in India, will only be there for a matter of minutes, where as the stones he places, may remain for decades to come if not disturbed. In fact in one of his list works, he records seeing a pile of stones he placed 16 years ago.

Long has a considered approach to the world around him, though his pieces are not say on the intricate scale of artists like Andy Goldsworthy, who also uses natural resources to create sculpture. Long’s work has a kind of considered simplicity, he does not want to make a huge impact on the world he encounters, but these small actions allow there to be a record of human interaction.
His lists are wonderful, documenting those small instances of awareness, some are observations of the world around him, some show his thought process, others are the sounds. One which was particularly fascinating, shows the similarities between Dartmoor and Japan, where he documents seeing the same things, in order, in two walks miles apart. It reminded me of a book called Bleeding London, where one character strives to walk the entire greater London A-Z road map. He records his walks in a diary, writing down only those things that have caught his attention. The character becomes obsessed with the minutiae of London’s streets, those tiny details and histories that make up a personal geography of the city. It strikes me will all have our own documentation of the journeys we take, those features of an area that catch our eye for no particular reason, or the interactions we witness and become part of through our presence. I think Long’s work conveys something of the way in which we have an impact on our geography. One sociological theory talks of the grammar of walking and the individual maps we all make through our footsteps, the short cuts and ways we manipulate pathways. Long’s lists give us a personal geography, his map.

The sculptures were very impressive, huge lines of slate and circles of flint, my only criticism, I just want to touch them dammit! I love sculpture but all I want to do is feel it, I admit some is to delicate to be man handled, but when faced with piles of stone, I need texture as well as sight. So impressive and beautiful though they were, I felt like I wasn’t getting the full experience.

All in all Heaven and Earth was very enjoyable, my only instructions, being go on a calm day, mid week, or a sunny weekend, I think the atmosphere would be spoiled by lots of people.

You can find out about visiting the exhibition here, and you can find out more about Richard Long’s work here. You can also buy Richard Long, ‘Heaven and Earth’ on Amazon.