After a very pleasant lunch with young Tewfic on Friday, I took a leisurely ferry ride down the Thames to the Tate Modern to see the giant crack that has been made in the floor of the massive Turbine Hall.

The crack forms an artwork, an installation by Doris Salcedo called “Shibboleth”. Now, whether or not you think that a giant crack in the floor of a building can be considered “art” or not you’d have to admit that it’s an absolutely fascinating thing to see. The crack itself is, well, it’s a crack. It gets a bit deeper and a bit wider as it progresses along the length of the Turbine Hall and one can see that the sides of the crack are formed with a wire mesh that I’m told was once used in a fence that divided two countries in Eastern Europe. Whether that’s actually true or not I don’t know.

Flicking through the leaflet that visitors are given as they enter, I see that there’s a great symbolism attached to the work by the artist “the history of racism, running parallel to the history of modernity and... its untold dark side”.

However, walking up and down its length, I didn’t hear anybody discussing the broader themes of division and separation although perhaps those are just not subjects that many people would discuss openly. The main topic of conversation was, perhaps predictably, how was it done. How did it get here? Was it made elsewhere and lowered into the floor of the Tate? Had the actual floor been attacked by men with pneumatic drills? People laid down and tried to see if there’d been a change in the height of the floor, they pushed their fingers against the joins in the concrete to test the putty and they carefully paced out the width and length of the concrete blocks in an attempt to find clues.

I noticed that couples walking along the length of the crack, deep in conversation, would often subconsciously position themselves on the same side of the divide, reluctant to walk on different sides. Children, obviously, tried to climb down inside it and there was lots of posing for photographs that involved pretending to have got a foot or an arm stuck deep in the crevice. One unlucky man dropped his mobile phone, which caught the toe of his shoe at the perfect angle to send the device skittering across the floor until it plopped into the crack. This acrobatic disaster was accompanied by a chorus of several sharp intakes of breath.

From the floor overlooking the Turbine Hall it was interesting to see the snaking line of visitors as they followed the line of the crack, leaving the rest of the hall deserted. Yes, from a people-watching exercise it was a fascinating afternoon. I spent over three hours there, watching, photographing and occasionally recording some audio. Jo arrived later in the day, walked the length of the crack in three minutes and suggested we head to the bar. By which time, I have to say, I was in need of a beer. Clearly, she was more interested in the ‘craic’ than the ‘crack’.

Whether or not Shibboleth succeeds in prompting us to think about divisions in our society I’m not sure. It certainly succeeds in firing people’s imaginations in other ways and definitely gets people talking to one another. Which, we must admit, is quite an achievement for a crack in the floor.

Tags: art, tate modern, london, slideshows

Not according to my friend Masher it’s not. And if Modern Art leaves you bewildered then the latest installation at Tate Modern is probably unlikely to bring you any further into the folds of the Modern Art community.

After giant spiders, slides, white cubes and a massive solar installation, the Tate is, like The Jam, going underground. The latest piece to grace the massive Turbine Hall is a chasm that stretches the length of the building.

Now I can see how that might be an interesting concept and I can understand how it might invert our usual views of such a robust and impressive structure as the Tate but artist Doris Salcedo claims to be “addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world”. I haven’t seen the crack in person but I must admit that it didn’t immediately bring the subject of racism to mind.

Either way, you can’t deny that it’s an unusual subject for an artwork and continues the Tate’s record of displaying ground-breaking art. “Ground-breaking” - geddit?

Tags: art, tate modern, london