As the yellow satin line unfurled, more and more space seemed to be claimed by it. The action with the satin had appeared to split the space in two, as would a pencil being drawn down the length of a piece of paper. This simple act altered my attention to the materiality of the floor, and I noticed the scar of Doris Salcedo’s artwork ‘Shibboleth’ (2007) 38 zig-zagging its way down the Turbine hall. It was interesting to see that Salcedo’s work had directly cut into the institutional space of Tate and responded to territorial issues of power. In the text associated with the artwork Tate questions; ‘What might it mean to refer to such violence in a museum of modern art?’ space.

Salcedo’s artwork had originally provided a crack through the concrete of the Turbine Hall, an action that had directly impacted the architecture of the space, the rupture questioning, extending, or breaking borders and altering it beyond the exhibited time of the work. The filled in crack was still present and a memory of the rupture Shibboleth had caused. The yellow ribbon followed alongside and was now set in dialogue with the trace of ‘Shibboleth’, a fault-line in the concrete. If Salcedo’s artwork had been a deliberate rupturing of the institutional space, what did the new and temporary yellow line afford?

In contrast to the powerful and violent rupture ‘Shibboleth’ must have made when it was cut, the ribbon had silently brushed the surface, stroking it, a soft imposition. Our slight material act had softly appropriated a temporary power over the space that surrounded it. I had been unaware that Lloyd had ended the unfurling of the yellow line at the door to a staff entrance that opened out into the Turbine Hall. As Tate staff came out through this door, they intuitively avoided stepping on the satin and walked along it, following its path.
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I realised that it was regulating movement down the space, just as any traffic line would on a public highway, and that conventionally yellow lines signified the prevention of any unauthorised stopping. It also was holding a group of school children to one side of the Turbine Hall. Was this an example of making-visible of tacit behaviour? Had it turned the hall into a court of play, just as a line would in a tennis or basketball court as a new space of territorial contests? (extract from K.foster PhD)

York Gallery. York Museums Trust.

Exploring Interdisciplinary Methods. Proposition Studios. 

Fitzwilliam Museum. Cambridge.

Henry Moore Studios and Gardens.