At Tate Britain the holiday season has just begun: A Christmas tree is the eye catcher of the festive season in London, Great Britain. Hanging upside down from the glass ceiling in the Millbank entrance, the installation by Shirazeh Houshiary can be looked at from three levels of the art gallery: the tip of the tree from the lower floor, the body from the ground floor, and the glittering roots from the upper floor.

The Christmas tree by Shirazeh Houshiary, a visual artist from Iran, was unveiled on 1 December 2016 inside the gallery’s Millbank building and is exhibited with the support from Lisson Gallery. It is the first Christmas tree at the gallery since work began on the new Tate Britain, but also a reimagination of a similar piece Houshiary created for Tate Britain over 20 years ago. The installation forms the spectacular centrepiece besides a display of works by prominent British artists such as Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Alison Wilding, and marks the start of a new series of commissions for the festive season while the work itself focuses on the pine tree’s natural qualities such as texture, colour, smell and shape.

The exhibition

The exhibition “Sculpture as Object“ is curated by Clarrie Wallis, Senior Curator of Contemporary British Art, and Elsa Coustou, Assistant Curator Contemporary British Art. After the presentation of the Turner Prize on 5 December at Tate Britain, the exhibition will reopen in full to show works by Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Jacqui Poncelet, Richard Wentworth and Bill Woodrow.

Find out more about the installation!