The Bloomberg Commission: Goshka Macuga

Following a two year closure - and ?13.5 million spend - the re-launched and expanded Whitechapel Gallery celebrates its launch. Among the new artworks to draw the crowds for this eagerly anticipated reopening is a year-long installation by London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008 for Objects in Relation. The site-specific tapestry artwork she has created here, The Nature of the Beast, is the first of The Bloomsberg Commissions and it's pertinent to the Whitechapel Gallery in a number of ways. Macuga's work was inspired by Picasso's Guernica which was exhibited here in 1939 to raise consciousness of the Spanish Civil War. The price of entry: a pair of boots - which were then sent to the freedom fighters in Spain. In the fifties Picasso's painting was created as a tapestry which, in 1985 was hung in the United Nations Headquarters in New York outside the Security Chamber. It remained there for twenty years as a permanent reminder of the horrors of war. In the light of this and recent political events - not to mention anti-war protestors during the recent G20 summit - it's plain to see why Picasso's imagery still remains relevant today.