Joy of Christmas

Last Christmas it was smashed plates that could receive text messages. The year before, a bare aspen hung with hundreds of cheap rosaries. Each year, Tate Britain, in London, invites a different artist to create a Christmas tree to stand in the grand rotunda of the Duveen Galleries, and the results have been dramatically varied over the 18 years of the scheme.

Yesterday, artist Gary Hume’s 2005 tree was unveiled, a surprisingly sober addition to the list. He has chosen a traditional neatly shaped spruce and decorated it with nothing but a flock of cut-out flat steel blackbirds that seem to have alighted on the branches.

His dream of a black Christmas is lit only by the dull reflections from the golden beaks of the birds, as the light from the dome above strikes them. This echoes a characteristic of the artist’s paintings, which are often gloss or enamel paint on aluminium panels.

Hume’s birds are a deeply traditional choice. Although it seems that he has collided the Christmas tradition with a nursery rhyme about four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie, the artist said that in fact he was referring to the “calling birds” in The 12 Days of Christmas.

The four calling birds were “colly” (coal-black) birds, which stay in the British Isles all year round. The tree is on show at Tate Britain until January 3, admission free.

Comments are closed.