Saturday 23 May 2009, 17.00–18.00

Join the procession as Michelangelo Pistoletto rolls a giant ball of newspapers through London streets.

One of the key protagonists of arte povera, Michelangelo Pistoletto will recreate his seminal action Walking Sculpture in London, first performed in 1966 on the streets of Turin. The original sculpture Ball of Newpapers, a two metre globe made of newspapers, which embodied the constantly shifting, newsworthy events of life over a two-year period, was taken for 'a walk' through the streets of Turin with his wife Maria Pistoletto in an action entitled Walking Sculpture, creating a political, yet playful gesture.

For UBS Openings: Long Weekend a contemporary replica of the original sculpture will be made using today's newspapers to represent today's political and social condition. It will be rolled by Michelangelo and Maria Pistoletto from Tate Modern, across the Millennium Bridge, through parts of the city, and then complete it's journey back to Tate on a boat.

Take part in this communal action by joining the procession starting on the mezzanine bridge in the Turbine Hall.

Tate Modern  Turbine Hall Bridge
Free

    

Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933, Biella) began his career as a painter in the mid-1950s and a decade later became one of the key figures of Arte Povera, both as an artist and as a spokesperson. He was widely known in the early 1960s for his 'Mirror Paintings', in which life-size images of the human figure, usually shown in arrested action, were applied to a polished stainless-steel back-ground as if it were a canvas. Breaking down traditional notions of figurative art, these works reflected the surroundings and the spectator and so made them part of the work, linking art and life, the past and the present in an ever-changing spectacle. Key works in the Tate collection by Pistoletto can be viewed on Level 5 in Energy and Process.