Health and Safety - 1. Contemporary Art - 0?
It only opened to the public on Tuesday but already Ai Weiwei's installation in the Turbin Hall at Tate Modern has suddenly been closed, amid fears that it's some kind of health and safety issue.
Sunflower Seeds – which consists of 100 million porcelain seeds – was closed all day on Thursday but as yet nobody from Tate Modern has provided an official explanation.
The Guardian has suggested it may be due to health and safety worries over the quantity of ceramic dust caused by visitors walking over the small ceramic seeds. Although others have claimed it's due to negative reviews on a certain influential art blog...
The work – by Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei – consists of over 100 million individually handmade sunflower seeds that form a thick cobbly carpet across the floor of the Turbine Hall. Each seed has been individually made out of porcelain by skilled artisans in the city of Jingdezhen, famed, apparently, for its production of porcelain. It claims to explore issues like the legacy of Chairman Mao, China's role in the world today and the relationship between the individual and society as a whole.
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