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.

Over the lovely bank holiday weekend, Squidge Mags’ team were trying to think of fun, cheap things to do. The Tate had the perfect answer; a giant indoor assault course  and endless bits of creative fun and interactive art to sink your teeth into…. And all gloriously free hooray!

We started at the assault course, this was a remake of the 1970’s sculpture created by Robert Morris ‘Bodyspacemotionthings’. It was first exhibited in 1971, before the days of health and safety, and it asked people to interact with art in a way that had never been allowed before. After 4 days the exhibition had to close due to over enthusiastic response to this new challenge. 

The Tate Modern had recreated this sculpture taking into account modern safety standards. The result was pretty impressive. You needed to get there early as there were soon queues forming around all the wooden slides, see-saws, tubes, slopes and pivot boards. But it was endless amounts of fun, the highlights being the Teaspoon being told off for running down the slope when you were meant to use the rope. The Illiterate Knife Rack falling over in the giant tube while it was rolling around. Some over-enthusiastic use of the sew saw, involving rapid running back and forth to dismayed onlookers. The Teaspoon falling over on the slide due to unsuitable foot wear and being forced to chose between people looking up her skirt or shuffling slowly up backwards (eventually I was dragged up by the Knife Rack!)

Generally awesome fun, as someone who always wants to touch sculptures, and generally gets told off, it was wonderful to interact with this piece so fully. Also great to see other people approaching art in a totally new way. 

Then we moved outside, to the magical land of fairy tales, after a bit of wandering round, we were invited to make a tree out of moss (the answer obviously being yes!) As part of the Long Weekend there was a whole host of activities to get people doing art. A lot of these were designed for the younger audience, not that that stopped us! After making some slightly shoddy trees out of moss, we then created characters to dwell in the magical forest (awesome). From doing this we discovered you could collect stamps and win prizes through your artistic activities.

The Knife Rack’s face lit up ‘we can win medals…’ cue all three of us getting very excited and deciding what task to do next. Some highlights were contributing to a giant clay sculpture, explaining what it meant to be a nomad, talking to a conjurer, making up stories, learning about plants and drawing a spider. And we reaped the rewards of badges and a medal a piece!

The atmosphere outside was fantastic, there were loads of children engaging in art, being creative and enjoying themselves. Live music, dance, cinema as well as an ever growing collection of amateur art adorning the trees and ground. It was wonderful to see art bringing so many different people together, the Tate and free art galleries have always worked to bring art to the masses. Events like this one brought that message back again, that and we got to get medals and play on a giant jungle gym… all in all not bad for absolutely zero dollar.

Here’s what we won: