London, Murillo transforms Tate's Turbine Hall into a Monet-style garden

Tate Modern ’s Turbine Hall has become a large garden: this is happening as a result of a large-scale installation by Oscar Murillo, a 1986-born Colombian painter who is among the most prominent names in international art. It is UNIQLO Tate Play: The flooded garden, part of Tate Modern’s free art-for-all program in collaboration with UNIQLO, which for this year sees Murillo create a collaborative work of epic proportions in Turbine Hall. The installation draws inspiration from Claude Monet ’s Water Lilies depicting his garden in Giverny, France, and in particular from the large canvases now at the Musée de l’Orangerie whose structure Murillo’s installation echoes, and is based on the Colombian artist’s Surge series of works, paintings that feature gestural brushstrokes in oil paint that flow across the canvas like water.

Visitors, from July 20 to Aug. 26, enter a curved structure framed by massive canvas walls that have been populated with hundreds of messages and hand-drawn drawings made by Tate Modern visitors from around the world. The public is invited to superimpose undulating brushstrokes on the canvases, with their gestures thus shaping The flooded garden, painted in shades of deep blue, bright yellow and pink. These evolving collaborative paintings will then remain on display in Turbine Hall for all to see.

As part of this year’s commission, the artist also invited artists to flood the Tate Modern with sound. Mar, Rio y Cordillera, a group of 12 musicians from Colombia’s Cauca Valley region, will present weekly performances in Turbine Hall celebrating the traditional music of the Colombian Pacific. These musicians, percussionists and performers will also take over London’s green spaces with a series of improvised “flooding” performances throughout August.

An in-depth exhibition in the Tate Modern’s South Tank on Murillo’s Surge series paintings made over the years also provides additional context for visitors. Influenced by Claude Monet’s famous paintings, Water Lilies , created while Monet suffered from cataracts, Murillo draws similarities between this condition of vision and the way people can be “socially blind,” that is, unable to truly understand each other. Murillo calls this idea “social cataracts.” After first exhibiting the Surge works in 2019, Murillo continued to develop the series during the Covid-19 pandemic while in his hometown in Colombia. There he divided his time between studying and working with his community during what he describes as a period of “social collapse.”

There will then be a time for performance: for August 1, the artist has invited a group of performers to activate the Turbine Hall installation. Using movement and spoken word, the performers will respond to drawings with words such as “force,” “law,” “masses,” and “protest.”

Pictured is the installation. Photo: Tim Bowditch and Reinis Lismanis

London, Murillo transforms Tate's Turbine Hall into a Monet-style garden

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