Taking on the Turbine Hall

Kara Walker's Fons Americanus is a 13-metre tall working fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London. Created by artist for the 2019 Hyundai Commission in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

Fons Americanus is a 13-metre tall working fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London. Rather than a celebration of the British Empire, Walker’s fountain explores the interconnected histories of Africa, America and Europe. She uses water as a key theme, referring to the transatlantic slave trade and the ambitions, fates and tragedies of people from these three continents. Fantasy, fact and fiction meet at an epic scale.

Fantasy, fact and fiction meet at an epic scale in Kara Walker's ambitious Hyundai Commission: 'Fons Americanus' in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of London's Buckingham Palace, the 13-metre high fountain questions how we remember history in our public monuments and at the same time, presents a narrative on the origins of the African diaspora.⁣⁣

In 1994 Eyton was one of a number artists invited by Tate to work in the interior of Bankside power station, now Tate Modern. This picture captures the enormous scale of the turbine hall. He wrote: ‘the machinery looked like modern sculpture and everywhere there were the colours of rust and blue paint’.

Since Tate Modern first opened in 2000, it has become a London landmark, not just for the art it houses, but also for the architecture of the building itself.

Juan Munoz Double Bind at Tate Modern

The Tank, Bankside Power Station - Anthony Eyton

First New York and now London, Instagrammers are persuading the world’s biggest galleries and theatres to let them in after hours – with stunning results

Artwork page for ‘Slides in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, 2007’, Matthew Pillsbury, 2007

Tania Bruguera’s Hyundai Commission in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall asked museum visitors to experience a community-driven response to the global migration crisis.

Mark Windsor, Art of Interaction: A Theoretical Examination of Carsten Höller’s Test Site, Tate Papers no.15, Spring 2011

Anywhen is one of the very best Turbine Hall commissions, filling the space with sounds and furies, stillness and movement