9 February until mid-March
McAulay Gallery, Level 1, Tate Modern
Open to all, Free
Supported by Louis Vuitton and recently acquired for Queensland Art Gallery.
Tate Modern invites families to take part in a free interactive project in which they can help transform a blank white room into a spotty, dotty and colourful space with thousands of polka dots. Tate Modern is pleased to present the first version of this project to be shown outside Australia in celebration of the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern.
Visitors will enter an entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, which they are invited to cover with multi-coloured stickers. Over the course of a few weeks the room will be transformed from a blank canvas into an explosion of colour, with thousands of spots stuck over every surface by children and their families.
The project relates to Kusama’s fascination with dots, the result of hallucinations she experienced as a child, during which her whole visual field became overrun by single images: nets, flowers, or ubiquitous dots. She channelled this experience into a philosophy of ‘self-obliteration’ where being overwhelmed is a celebratory choice.
The Obliteration Room was first staged at the Queensland Art Gallery as part of the 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, at which time Yayoi Kusama was invited to conceive a project for children. Tate Modern is pleased to present the first version of this project to be shown outside Australia.
Visitors are invited to tweet pictures of the Obliteration Room with the tag #ObliterationRoom, or share them on Facebook at facebook.com/tategallery.