Melissa

We went to the Tate Modern. The journey started before we got there. We got off the bus and right in front of us was St Paul’s Cathedral which was massive. Then we went down a turning and had a really nice silver bridge called the Millennium Bridge. We got a really good view from it. To the right you could kind of see the London Eye through buildings. To the left you could see Tower Bridge and straight ahead of you was the Tate Modern with all sorts of pictures on the outside of the building.

We went upstairs to the 5th floor and at first we went on a games machine which was about Picasso’s drawings. To get the highest points you had to make this woman look ugly by picking out different sort of eyes like maybe Picasso would draw and lips and noses. At the end your picture really did look like a Picasso drawing – no matter what nose or mouth you picked. You played against six players. You had to make it as ugly as you could to make it cry. It was meant to be like the Weeping Woman.

There was another thing that was like a fruit machine. It had a question on top saying “Is it art or not? You decide”. It had three different wheels to turn. I turned it and I picked an apple. And then it says “what do you want to do with it?” You can either photograph it, shrink it, frame it… I chose to shrink it and photograph it. It asks you “Does it look good? What does it look like? Does it look like art? Is it ugly?” I picked that it looked like art. Then it asks you “Is it a brilliant piece of art or can anyone do it?” and I picked anyone can do it, which I think is true. Anyone can do art. But only certain people’s art is actually art.

Then we went onto to look at some pictures and sculptures and things. There was one brilliant one that stood out to me. There was a whole wall of different coloured.. I suppose you could call them poems in a way. The artist wrote about controversial things. Each one was 100 words in 20 lines. They were on different subjects and they were flyposted across New York and to have that flyposted on the wall in the Tate I thought that was a great touch.

After that we went to the 3rd floor. The first thing we walked into was two dead birds arrowed to the wall. Weird… They were supposed to reflect the loss of imaginative freedom. I don’t really make the connection but yeah..! There were lots of Picasso pictures and there was also this thing that hanged from the ceiling. There was loads of metal stuff like trumpets and forks and knives and stuff that was hanging from the ceiling with lighting and stuff. That was great. There were World War pictures too. There was one with flags of the different countries turned into a lightning bolt and hitting Hitler. That was great. That was really it.

There was one exhibition with loads of pictures of Black people and everything was untitled and there was no explanation to it or anything. I thought well “Great”… I didn’t really know what to make of it and there was nothing to tell you what to make of it either. I think it was just a famous person and cos he was famous his pictures got taken. I thought was pretty rubbish. I didn’t see what was so special about these photographs. I don’t think it was about the people in it. It was about how he took the photographs. I didn’t think it was special at all. I just thought I could go round and take a load of pictures of people in poses. One of them even had the photographer in it. And I thought, “what’s so special about that?!” It was just three people standing up against a blank wall. It was all untitled. There wasn’t really an explanation. It just said that in this picture is the photographer. I think that’s the only thing I disliked. At first I disliked the look of the birds on the wall but then I thought it kind of got my interest in trying to work out how it related to that [loss of imaginative freedom]. There must be some sort of way – I just don’t understand it.

For the Street Art exhibition I went on the internet, did my thing (I wrote Mel using spray paints on a computer) and added it to the online gallery. It should be great if I can find it online. The Street Art exhibition has got 5 different graffiti artists from Spain and places like that.

I hadn’t been to the Tate Modern before. I thought it looked big but when we got inside it l thought it was even bigger cos it seemed like there were just endless rooms of art. It looked bigger on the inside that it did from the outside. Weird building to have art in. I would expect it to be a crazy building like the restaurant we saw round the corner with the pointed bits. I’d expect an art gallery to look like that. It was quite intriguing. I’d definitely like to go back again.

<< Back