Tate Modern, London
The Lebanese artist has turned trumpets, drums, cones and voices into an ingenious, interconnected sonic beast with funny, sad and mystical results. Prepare to feel the earth move!
On the floor of the Turbine Hall, there are wide water basins and huge flattish rough-hewn rocks you might see on moorland or in a desert. You can sit or stand or climb on them. But if you look up, you won’t be able to stop looking up – because it’s raining musical instruments. Immense elongated brass trumpets and giant glowing drums seem to float in the air, suspended from the girders of the former power station’s roof.
If Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui had just left it at that, it would be an impressive, intriguing installation, but this is Tate Modern, honey, and Atoui hasn’t been asked to occupy its grandest space with mere physical objects. Instead, his sculptural creations and found stuff resonate and echo with an ever-changing, invisible art of noises. An earth-shaking bass note throbs from a hanging trumpet – or is it from that translucent cone rising out of the ground like an ethereal minaret? Then a drumbeat booms through the space and a woman’s plangent, achingly lovely voice sings notes of infinite nostalgia and melancholy.
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