The Telegraph
Monday 06 December 2010
About: Giorgio Sadotti
Where is the glitter on the Tate Britain's Christmas tree?
This year's festive exhibit will have a startling twist. Mark Hudson reports .
Where would Tate be without a touch of controversy? From Carl Andre's infamous "Tate Bricks" in the 1970s (just a pile of bricks, in case you don't remember) through Tracey Emin's
unmade bed to Martin Creed's Turner Prize-winning The Lights Going On and Off in 2001, Britain's premier modern art gallery has thrived by igniting a glow of righteous indignation in the
belly of middle England.
Yet with the widely held perception that we all now love contemporary art, and with this year's Turner Prize (awarded tonight) raising barely a burble of protest, it might appear that the sting
has gone out of the avant garde. So it will be heartening to some, and infuriating to many more, to see a new cause célèbre on Tate's horizon, one that comes from a most unlikely area: the
gallery's annual Christmas tree.
Since 1988, Tate Britain has commissioned a leading contemporary artist to decorate a tree beneath its splendid glass-covered Rotunda. With Sarah Lucas providing angels made from old
tights in 2006 and Bob & Roberta Smith creating interactive pedal-powered lights two years ago, the results, while not quite falling into the category of all-round family entertainment, have
been an opportunity for artists to demonstrate the cosier side of their talents.
On Thursday, however, artist Giorgio Sadotti will be unveiling a Christmas tree, a towering Norwegian spruce, all gleaming needles, and… well, basically that's it. Or it almost is. If the artist's
contribution appears at first to be negligible, visitors will find mirrored silver cards lying around the base of the tree inviting them to a performance on January 6, Twelfth Night, when the
Christmas decorations are traditionally taken down.
If there is one thing guaranteed to wind up those unconvinced by contemporary art, it isn't the inflammatory quality of the content, so much as the perception that there is no content, that
no effort has been made and that the public is being conned.
Sadotti, however, denies that he is being provocative. "I'm showing what I believe to be a naturally beautiful object," he says. "When you see a tree in the forest you don't think, 'That tree's
naked, it needs a bit of tinsel.' I want people to question the way objects are transformed by being moved from one context to another. And I'm hoping that all the Christmases of the past
will be brought to mind through the power of the imagination."
That's quite a demand to make of gallery goers. Tate had considered promoting the performance on January 6 – which, without giving anything away, promises to be spectacular – as the main
event, rather than the tree itself. Yet Sadotti is adamant that the two are indivisible.
"Without the tree being there for exactly the right amount of time, the performance has no point," he says.
The half-Italian son of a Manchester club owner, Sadotti has been described as "the missing link between John Cage and Tommy Cooper", a specialist in conceptual gags so deadpan and so
fugitive you may not be sure there's a joke, let alone a punchline. In Went to America didn't say a word, he flew to New York with a tape recorder running, walked the streets for 24 hours
and, despite bumping into Julia Roberts by accident, didn't speak. He then exhibited the tapes as the work.
"I was aware from childhood that I could make people laugh," he says. "But I'm not out to get laughs with my work as such. It's all about timing, about doing things people don't expect at
exactly the right moment. That is the essence of comedy, and it's what I'm trying to do with this Christmas tree."
For his contribution to a mixed show in Marseilles, Sadotti arranged for a local circus performer to whip the spaces on the walls between the other artists' works. And whips will feature again
at Tate Britain, when Sadotti lays a large bullwhip beside his Christmas tree at its unveiling. Is his preoccupation with these objects more than just artistic?
"I wish it were that simple," he says, a touch ruefully. "I'm interested in the way objects have a power beyond what they appear to be. A whip makes an amazing sound which you could never
imagine simply by looking at it."
However the whip relates to the Christmas tree and whatever else he may mean by it, Sadotti is insistent that his tree is not a joke. "I'm taking it very seriously," he says. "If I wasn't, it would
have been all too easy to just put a few decorations on a tree."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/8183787/Where-is-the-glitter-on-the-Tate-Britains-Christmas-tree.html
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