Rotary Club of Westminster East

A Rotary club President takes responsibility for the overall focus and direction of the club during his/her year. The President has to be careful not to overreach or put in place plans that will be too difficult to implement.  My aim was to have an initial focus on the fellowship/social side of the club, mproving the ways the club interacts and looking at ways to make the club more attractive to would-be members.

One of the ways, I thought this could be achieved was to introduce Saturday ‘event-based’ meetings to our regular programme.  The idea being to provide members, guests and prospective members with a chance to meet in a less formal structure offering fellowship, aid member recruitment and showcase the diversity of Rotary.

On 14 August, we held our first event-based meeting at Tate Modern in London.  It is Britain's national museum of international modern art and is, with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and Tate Online part of the group now known simply as Tate.

Whenever you mention Tate Modern, it’s not uncommon to be asked “is it really art? or told “a child could do it”.  So, as a member of Tate, I thought Tate Modern would be a great place for our first event-based meeting.  After an initial conversation with the Group Manager, Emily Barnes, I was convinced it would be perfect for the first outing.

On the day we were 25-strong and all keen to learn more about Tate Modern, its collections and modern art. We were met by our two art-educator guides Charles Hustwick and Grace Adam and they were terrific throughout.  Once we organised ourselves into two smaller groups, our guides took us off to look at some of the significant works from the permanent collection.

The two groups set off to two different parts of the gallery armed with collapsible stools, clipboards and drawing pads.  Because we were all adults, the idea of ‘sketching’ and ‘recording our experience’ was not a wholly attractive proposition.

In my group, the first artist we discussed was Giuseppe Penone and his work Tree of 12 metres.

The drawing on the right is, I’m embarrassed to admit, is my own work.

I’ve looked at this work many times and while I’ve always found it attractive, I’ve never thought too much about it.  Charles told us that the two sculptures are actually cut from the same piece of wood. The picture below gives an idea of the work required to create Tree of 12 metres and works like it.

The second work that we looked at was an Untitled piece by Peter Fischli and David Weiss which I think generated the most debate in our group.

When entering the room, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d accidently entered a store room or rubbish dump, albeit a neatly set out one.

It turned out that everything in the room was made from polythene foam and acrylic paint. Having been told this, everyone had a question or comment. The attention to detail is amazing and the smaller items, such as the pens, razors and yogurt pots are really very impressive, as the tyres and pallets.

Our group was now fully engaged and I noticed there was a great deal of sketching being done without being prompted by our guide Charles.

We were then introduced to Abakan Red by Magdalena Abakanowicz.

Abakan Red is part of a collection created by using sisal threads taken from the lengths of rope scavenged from the banks of the Vistula river, the longest and one of the most important rivers in Poland.

The threads are dyed in a pot, and woven together to create the large sculptural forms that she called Abakans.

The final work we looked at was Forest and Dove by Max Ernst, which also generated quite a bit of discussion.

This painting has a heavily textured and three-dimensional appearance. This is due to a technique called grattage. Grattage was invented by Ernst and the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró. This technique involves scraping the paint across the canvas so that the paint takes on the imprints of objects placed beneath the canvas.

Both the forest and dove themes have appeared several times in Ernst’s works. The forest image represents the forest near Ernst’s childhood home which inspired a sense of ‘enchantment and terror’ in the artist. The same analysis also states that the dove represents Ernst himself.

Our art-educator guide Charles in full flight:

Over lunch our two groups compared their experiences, guides and the works of art. Everyone agreed that our two art-educator guides, Charles and Grace, were first class; being knowledgeable and great communicators.

If you are going to be in London, regardless of your exposure to modern art, I would strongly recommend a guided tour at Tate Modern.  As the venue for our first event-based meeting, it was perfect.  The tours are very well run and give a real insight to modern art, its history and the artists.  And, thanks to the sketch pads, you can create your very own memory of the day.

Was the first event-based meeting what I had hoped for?  Yes I think it was. The feedback has been very positive and it sets a very good benchmark for future outings.  The next one is being planned for November.  It will have a very different focus though, as we will be visiting the Passage Day Centre to learn about homelessness services and hear the experiences of some of the people who rely on these support services.