The Last Supper by Giles Walker

Fabulous installation at the Science Museum by Giles Walker to compliment the current robots exhibition.

You are ushered into a dark room with twelve life sized figures made from scrap round a table which come to life and discuss forgiveness, guilt and judgment. The table also resembles a boat as the head of the table has a wheel and there is a child figure as a mast. Is it a play on a ship of fools? Towards the end of the 15 minute show the figure head figure which faces away from the table reads out the last meal requests from prisoners on death row.

This was quite an eerie experience with the combination of the dark and the creaking noise of the models.  At first people stood still and watched but then they gradually got more confident and walked round the table as if to listen to different figures. I couldn’t always hear what the figures were saying as the speech was quite mumbled but it didn’t matter too much and certain phrases reappeared like a chorus.

Closes on 4 June 2017

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