Tate - Tate Modern Blavatnik L2 South Gallery re-design - Creating a flexible and sustainable exhibition space - Request for Information

Last financial year, over £400k was spent on alternations of the Tate Modern gallery spaces, mainly dismantling and re-building walls to suit the layout requirements for each exhibition. This practise also contributes to one of the largest portions of the carbon footprint generated by exhibitions production. The next three exhibitions scheduled for Blavatnik L2 South Gallery are The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh, Light&Magic and Ana Mendieta. Each of these will require very different typology of artworks and different wall configurations, entailing significant structural changes that will further compound negative cost and carbon footprint trends. It is highly likely that, following current practice, a number of walls built for Light&Magic, will be demolished for the following show. The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh, scheduled prior to this, also provides a unique window of opportunity where we will be required to completely dismantle all walls in the gallery space, thus creating a blank canvas to work from. OUR AIMS – WHAT WE WANT TO ACHIEVE The TM Programme team would like to turn this challenge into an opportunity, where we are taking advantage of a completely empty space to design a new gallery that could be adapted for multiple exhibition projects. This project will commission specialised designers to design a set of modular, movable and re-configurable walls to use in Blavatnik L2 South Gallery. This would allow us to respond to project-specific spatial needs by achieving multiple layouts with flexible setworks, making substantial efficiencies in construction costs, materials, labour and waste. Blavatnik L2 South Gallery will enable us to pilot new ways of working in exhibition productions, providing a template that could be applied to other spaces at Tate Modern and other sites. This will also highlight Tate as a leader in developing new approaches to sustainable and circular exhibition production approaches for the wider art sector.