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Is an Art exhibition a show if no one sees it? Like the fallen tree in the forest does it exist? And is an artwork still an artwork if, once on display, it’s forced to fundamentally alter how the artist wants it to be viewed/experienced?

Two exhibitions have grabbed my attention in the last few weeks, for very different reasons.  The first is a huge Street Art project called The Underbelly Project, installed in secret, and illegally, in New York, with little to no audience, no budget, no fees and no commerciality. The second is quite the opposite – a huge, costly, ambitious installation in Tate Modern’s famed Turbine Hall from artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds installed in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall for the Unilever series

Ai Weiwei is one of China’s leading contemporary artists, activists and designers (he was originally an artistic consultant for the Birds Nest stadium created for the 2008 Beijing Olympics but ultimately distanced himself from the project). This is no doubt his most ambitious project to date, an installation of 100 million, hand painted, porcelain sunflower seeds on the floor of the turbine hall in Tate Modern.  A commentary on identity, famine, individuality and revolution, the work resonates on a number of levels. Each life-sized seed was made in Jingdezhen in China, a town that was the centre of porcelain production in imperial China and thus it also speaks to western consumption, the value of Chinese labour and the commercialisation of centuries old skills. The sheer volume of seeds is apparently awesome to behold, and the simple thought of 100million of anything is mind-boggling.  Naturally it makes perfect sense that such a populous work would come from a native of such a populous country, I wonder can we dare to dream in units that large? But I digress.

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds cover half of the Tate's Turbine Hall. Photograph: David Levene

The real point of interest in this story for me is how the original installation has had to be drastically changed from the artists’ true intention, and the question of whether this negates the integrity of the work. Weiwei had intended the work to be an experience, that people would walk across this “beach” of sunflower seeds, discover their porcelain make up, feel and hear the crunch underfoot, touch them and let them trickle through their hands, presumably to appreciate the individual craftsmanship of each tiny seed.  Indeed he seems to be practically encouraging people to take a piece of the work home with them in his pocket, and you can’t get more experiential than that.

Once the work was installed, however, it emerged that the sheer volume of porcelain dust that was being created by the audience walking through it was of significant danger to the health of the Tate’s workers, and potentially the visiting audience. As a result the ”experience” of the installation has been closed off, and visitors can only stand at the beach edge, or on the walkway above, to simply observe the work.

Visitors view the new Tate Modern Turbine Hall installation by Ai Weiwei in London which has been declared out of bounds after health risk concerns over dust Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

So does the installation still work? It would seem the themes mentioned above, and the sheer volume of the work would still be translatable, but doesn’t this make it a museum piece? Something to be observed and not experienced? For me one of the great strengths of contemporary art is the move toward inviting audiences into the experience, to provoking them and influencing them on a more visceral level than sheer “looking”, to engage the other senses in their response to the work. I have no argument with the safety decision but this fundamental change begs the question – is the work still valid? Does it still behave as the artist intended? As an audience will we “feel” the same things he hoped us to feel by simply imagining what might have been?

The Underbelly Project throws up another conundrum entirely. As with the Tate’s Turbine series this is also a hugely ambitious project of similarly immense scale. Running over 18 months, 103 artists from around the world were invited to create new art works in a large New York underground station, but here’s the kicker- the station is hidden beneath the city and was built but never commissioned for public use. The art works were installed without permission, the visits by the artists were conducted in secret, and only a small handful of participating artists and the occasional documentarian have ever experienced the show, or ever will.  The show opened and closed on the same night, and the entrance to the station has now been closed over.

The artists involved are all street artists, some of them the leading exponents of their art form in the world.  Organised by two artists; Workhorse and PAC, the project sought to reclaim the old ideals of street art that they feel have been eroded through the huge commercialisation of street work in recent years.  Speaking to journalist Jasper Rees (Sunday Times, NY Times) Workhorse comments:

“In the beginning street art was something you did because you didn’t fit in anywhere else. The ‘don’t give a fuck attitude was about doing it yourself. Fuck the galleries! If they don’t like the work then put it on the fucking street and ram it down their fucking throats. But for the last few years urban art has been getting ridiculous……People were going out and literally sawing walls in half to steal Banksy pieces. Electrical panels were being ripped off leaving live wires exposed that had Shepard Fairey stencils on them, It was commercialisation at it’s worst.  Early in the street-art years, I relished the ability to feel like I was my own island. The Underbelly was our way of feeling like we were an island again. We finally had a space in the world that collectors couldn’t contaminate.”

There are two great articles on the project online – both by Rees who was the only journalist invited to experience the completed project, and the only attendee at the “opening”. One is for the New York Times (and is free) the other – which is better and lengthier – is for the Sunday Times and costs £1 to read (or borrow a copy of this past weekend’s Magazine). To see pics go here or here or video tour here

I love the idea of a truly street art ethos show, and also the very fact that it is at once a time capsule, and yet also an anti time-capsule given the inhospitable nature of the location. In time the works will disintegrate in the damp, will grow mould or simply melt away, eaten up by the walls of the location. Any temptation to see it as a sealed time capsule homage to street art, a snapshot of this period that will be rediscovered in decades, is pointless, thus reinforcing the street art ethos. And yet it throws up another question, if no-one sees it, does the work exist as art? I’m not questioning the skill or the fact that this is created by artists, street or otherwise, but I’m fascinated with the relationship visual art has with its audience, in a way that is quite different to other art forms. Works of theatre, literature, dance, music – arguably they cannot exist without an audience to hear/see/experience them. Indeed the motivation to share the work is often the spur in its creation.

So if this art work exists but no audience has seen it first hand, if all we are left with is documentation, is it art? even though it has been created in exact accordance with the artists and curators wishes does it, like Weiwei’s sunflowers also become a museum piece by the nature of the project? or is the seed of discovery it sows experience enough?