Lee Urquhart Reviews 'Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life'

London’s Tate Modern gallery is, until January, home to an immersive experience quite unlike anything else.

Become aware of your senses, experience natural phenomena, and discover what a creative perspective can bring to issues of climate change, migration, and architecture at Olafur Eliasson’s newest exhibition In Real Life.

This collection of hands-on work does not have an obvious beginning. While there are, of course, entry doors, the experience begins long before reaching them. Outside the gallery stands Eliasson’s huge scaffolding waterfall, an exploration of nature and technology and a tribute to humanity’s ability to understand and remake nature in our own image.

On the way up to the exhibition space, you might question whether the lighting is faulty, but the bright yellow colour is actually Eliasson’s 1997 Room for One Colour transported to Tate’s second floor.

Finally, walk through those entry doors, and you find yourself surrounded by some of the Scandinavian artist’s best-known works from the past two decades. Reindeer moss - a vanilla coloured, springy flowerless plant - covers an entire gallery wall, its scent reaching across the vast space. Faux rain ‘trickles’ just outside the only window in the room, while golden water flows back and forth in a relaxed motion in channels across the floor. Close your eyes, and you’ll find yourself transported to a natural environment far removed from that of the brutalist concrete Southbank gallery.

To go by the promotional posters, Your Uncertain Shadow, is designed to be the leading piece of the exhibition. While it was certainly entertaining to see mine and the other visitor’s shadows presented as a living, moving rainbow, I personally feel the stand out piece was Your Blind Passenger. Possibly the greatest thrill, visitors enter a tunnel of luminescent fog spanning 39 meters in length, with what pilots refer to as ‘nil visibility’. Walking blind, there is a sense of extreme uncertainty that soon evolves into a strange calm as one gets used to overwhelming loss of their key sense. What was most interesting about this experience, is the heightened sense of being with the twenty-or-so other people who, although they cannot be seen, are walking the sightless path with you.

Collaboration with other visitors isn’t all that’s on offer, some big political issues are touched upon, including climate change.

The Glacier Series, is a collection of images Eliasson shot of the glaciers in Iceland in 1999, but halfway through the exhibition’s life at the gallery those images will be replaced with shots taken in 2019. This change in material is to showcase the startling difference between them. A video of 2018’s Ice Watch accompanies these images, allowing those with enough patience to watch blocks of glacial ice sitting beside the Thames, melting in real time.

After a few hours exploring the elemental, playful works of art, visitors can grab a bite to eat at the Terrace Bar. For the duration of the exhibition the bar will be hosting a special menu by Studio Olafur Eliasson’s kitchen team. The food on offer is based on the organic, vegetarian, and locally sourced cuisine served in Eliasson’s Berlin studio every day.