Carsten Höller’s helter-skelter slides are coming back to London – and this time you can slide on them at South Bank’s Hayward Gallery

Get ready for some artistic hijinks at the South Bank's Hayward Gallery, because Carsten Höller is back, and he is bringing his slides with him. 

 

The modern artist is probably most famous in London for his installation at the Tate Modern, in which children and grown ups alike could slide down a 56-metre long helter-skelter back in 2007.

 

He once said “the real material I am working with is people's experience” – and his works tend to involve some practical interaction with the art. 

 

If you missed it first time around – or you loved it and want some more – good news, because the Belgian artist is in town this summer.  And this time, he's got even more experiential art to get stuck into. 

 

The installation includes two specially-commissioned slides that will run from the gallery's glass pyramid ceiling to the entrance several floors below. 

 

 

There will also be two robotic beds that will mirror each other's movements as they roam the gallery. 

 

 

Called Decision, the interactive exhibition will run from June 10 to September 6.

 

(Mirror Carousel 2005/Attilio Maranzano)

 

Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery and exhibition curator, said: “Carsten Höller is truly one of the world’s most thought-provoking and profoundly playful artists, with a sharp and mischievous intelligence bent on turning our ‘normal’ view of things upside-down. 

 

“Decision will ask visitors to make choices, but also, more importantly, to embrace a kind of double vision that takes in competing points of view, and embodies what Höller calls a state of ‘active uncertainty’ – a frame of mind conducive to entertaining new possibilities.”