Tate Modern today unveils the largest slide in Britain which will fill the vast Turbine Hall.
The Bankside gallery has been turned into a large playground with visitors able to travel down five large slides which spiral through the huge space connecting the galleries with Turbine Hall. The biggest slide is 55.5 metres long and has a drop of 27 metres.
The helter skelter, entitled Test Site, is the brainchild of German installation artist Carsten Höller who sees slides as an essential mode of human transport.
He said after trying the ride “I felt completely exhilarated as I came down.”
He wants to see slides connecting MPs with their offices and the House of Commons chamber and between shopping centres and Tube stations.
Visitors will be able to sit in canvas sacks and slide from the fifth floor to the ground, accelerating to 30mph. Three chutes depart from each of the main levels.
The slides of stainless steel and polycarbonate acrylic glass will stay until next April and are the latest in the Unilever series of Turbine Hall installations.
Höller said: "Going down can be like being under the influence of a drug, a thrilling experience, but it is also a fast and efficient way of getting from A to B. It's a playground for the body and the brain. It's art and it's not art."
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