The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Huge metal spider appears in Perth
Link up with Tate Modern brings artist’s giant metal spider to Fair City
A giant spider has landed in Perth as part of a link-up with the Tate Modern gallery.
The creature was created by FrenchAmerican artist Louise Bourgeois, best known for her large-scale structures.
It features in an exhibition of her work at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery.
The display has been brought to Perth as part of the Artist Rooms initiative, which puts out more than 1,600 modern and contemporary works that are jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, to museums across the country.
The programme aims to encourage more young people to get involved in creative projects.
Rhona Rodger, senior collections officer at the George Street museum, said: “We have been so excited about hosting this exhibition.
“When you get up close to the pieces you can really see the work that has gone into them,” she added. “They are incredibly beautiful and quite awe inspiring.
“It’s difficult to say how many visitors this will bring in, but we do expect the display to be very popular.”
Bourgeois, who died in 2010 at the age of 98, is described as one of the world’s most influential artists.
Often autobiographical, her work explores such themes as birth, childhood, death, love, loss and fear.
Although her career spanned seven decades, she was most prolific in later life when she created her famous spider sculptures.
When a version of the Spider sculpture sold for £6.6 million in 2011, it became the most expensive artwork created by a woman.
However, that sum was eclipsed when the 9ft-high arachnid came up for sale again at Christie’s and sold for a recordbreaking £22m in 2015.
One of Bourgeois’s final projects involved a series of watercolours in collaboration with British artist Tracey Emin.
The exhibition at Perth runs until November 18.