海角视频

Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound at Tate Modern

London, UK

海角视频鈥檚 structural engineering experts helped one of South Korea鈥檚 most exciting contemporary artists to realise her vision for a new Tate Modern exhibition.

Drawing inspiration from Tate Modern’s history as a power station, Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound transformed the Thames-side gallery鈥檚 Turbine Hall with striking hanging sculptures and epic mechanical installations, reimagining the space as a living factory.

Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound reimagines the Turbine Hall space as a 鈥渓iving factory鈥� producing membranous fabric 鈥榮kins鈥�.

Realising the vision for the installation required careful planning to work within the constraints of the Turbine Hall鈥檚 historic structure.

By the end of the six-month run of the exhibit, there will be approximately eight tonnes hanging from the existing structure.

We worked with traditional sketching to help realise the solution for the installation and digital rendering to enable collaboration with the artist.

Challenge

Mire Lee is known for her visceral sculptures, which use kinetic, mechanised elements to invoke the tension between soft forms and rigid systems. Her site-specific work for the Turbine Hall, which was open to the public from October 2024 to March 2025, is the first major presentation of Lee鈥檚 work in the UK.

A fascinating mix of materials such as silicone and chains bring her creations to life and challenge our ideas of what is beautiful, perverse, provocative and desirable. Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound invites us to revel in contradictory emotions: from awe and disgust to compassion, fear and love.

Realising the vision for the installation required careful planning to work within the constraints of the Turbine Hall鈥檚 historic structure.

Since Tate Modern opened in 2000, the Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world鈥檚 most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art, reaching an audience of millions each year.

The way artists have interpreted this vast industrial space has revolutionised public perceptions of contemporary art in the twenty-first century. The annual Hyundai Commission gives artists an opportunity to create new work for this unique context. Our team have worked on several installation within this prestigious space.

Solution

We worked closely with Mire Lee and Millimetre, the specialist contractor, to develop the concept of the work to allow us to understand the structural solutions that would be required to ensure the adaptability of the space and to fully realise the artist鈥檚 vision. The aesthetic intent was to reutilise the industrial feel of the Turbine Hall.

The artist reimagines Tate Modern as an 鈥渋ndustrial womb鈥�. Reflecting on the building鈥檚 former life as a power station, Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound presents the Turbine Hall as a living factory, finding human dreams and desires in sprawling mechanical systems.

Lee populates the Turbine Hall with 鈥渟kins鈥�, fabric sculptures that hang from the ceiling on metal chains. At the centre of the Hall’s east end, suspended from six lines, a three-and-a-half tonne motorised turbine slowly spins. It discharges a viscous liquid from flesh-like silicone tentacles into a large tray. As the 鈥渇actory鈥� runs, new skins are wetted under the turbine, then moved by technicians to harden on nearby racks before being hauled into the air. Over time they will accumulate, 鈥渂irthed鈥� from the body of the building while appearing to 鈥渟hed from the ceiling鈥� above. A process of production and decay plays out, facilitated by both machinery and human hands.

By the end of the six-month run of the exhibit, there will be approximately eight tonnes hanging from the existing structure. We conducted studies into the structural capacity of the Turbine Hall, looking at the archive drawings for the building to fully understand its capabilities and develop a deep understanding of the structure鈥檚 extra capacity. This was critical in enabling the artist to push the boundaries of the structure鈥檚 use.

Our experts also worked closely with the artist to refine the design for the spinning turbine installation, optimising the connection blocks for the piece, enabling it to spin through 350-degrees and refining its slender form, while retaining the sense that it feels appropriate to the Turbine Hall space.

We worked with both traditional sketching, to help the team realise the solution for the installation, and digital rendering and computational modelling to enable an agile process of collaboration with the artist. We developed computational scripts that could model all the settings of the installation across the exhibition鈥檚 six-month span, supporting the artist to fully visualise the evolution of the work.

Value

Our experts worked closely with Mire Lee throughout the development of the work, helping to both shape the vision and to ensure it would practically work within the constraints of the existing structure and space.

The computational models developed by our team also played a key role in planning the logistical development of the exhibition 鈥� defining when new aspects of the evolving work would need to be delivered to the site for installation.

The artist was also keen to retain all the team鈥檚 sketches and computational models as a catalogue to record the story of the evolution of the work. Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: runs at Tate Modern Turbine Hall throughout the beginning of 2025.