Saturday 29 March 2008, 14.00–15.30

Gustav Metzger, born 1926, is the renowned artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and co-organised the Destruction in Art Symposium in London in 1966. Metzger was also involved in the Fluxus movement and famously declared an Art Strike from 1977 to 1980. Concerned with environmental issues in art already in the 1970s, many of his projects are now seen as astonishingly prescient. After a career spanning decades, he is now in greater demand than ever, generating new projects as for Münster Sculpture Projects 2007 or realising earlier ideas, as with Project Stockholm, originally conceived in 1972 for the UN Environmental Conference in Stockholm. Now produced for the Sharjah Biennale (2007), the huge installation consists of 120 cars that discharge their exhaust fumes into a plastic structure.

For Talking Art, Gustav Metzger is interviewed by Andrew Wilson, Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£8 (£6 concessions), booking recommended