American sculptor Richard Tuttle’s I Don’t Know. The Weave of Textile Language installation currently occupies the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, London until 6 April 2015. This really big, orange and red, flowing and luminous winged thing combines “vast sways of fabrics” made from both man-made and natural fibres (ie plant product), hanging from a carved wooden modular structure (more plant product). While markedly an abstract form, it is open to interpretation, with some suggesting an aeroplane wing. What WE see, is a giant red lily stamen – with the vertical bit the anther (or anthers), covered in golden pollen, and the red upright the filament – absorbing and seemingly moving with the coming and going light, just as it would in nature. Yet, saying that, in a ‘world that crushes the ambiguous‘, Tuttle’s artwork, we are happy to say, remains beautifully enigmatic.
© Tate
Lily with its stamens – see it?