This year conceptual artist Giorgio Sadotti has been commissioned to create the Tate Britain Christmas Tree.
For Flower Ssnake, Sadotti has chosen to display a Norwegian Spruce in the gallery's neoclassical Rotunda, but has resisted the tradition of decorating it. At the bottom of the tree rests a coiled bullwhip to be used in a performance on the twelfth night when the spell of Christmas will be dramatically driven out of the tree with the whip.
Sadotti said: "For me the challenge was to present a tree that was naturally effortless. A tree that managed to maintain its dignity and timeless grace. A tree that remained sublime. A tree that was familiar but strange, like all trees but no other. A tree that had the potential to become another. A tree that talked. A tree as art."
Image: Giorgio Sadotti, Flower Ssnake (2010), Tate Britain Christmas Tree for 2010. Image from the Tate Britain website
