Sculptor set for Tate Modern hall

Chairs have featured heavily in Salcedo's previous work

The Tate Modern has commissioned sculptor Doris Salcedo to create a new piece of work for the London gallery's Turbine Hall.

Colombian-born Salcedo, 49, will follow the German artist Carsten Holler, whose spiralling slides have been a huge success in the giant hall.

Salcedo's plans for the space are being kept secret, but her previous work has dwelt on themes of violence and loss.

The work will go on display for six months from 9 October.

Guerrilla coup

Tate Modern director Vicente Todoli said: "We look forward to seeing how Salcedo's commission will engage as much with the iconic architecture of the Turbine Hall as with the symbolic significance of Tate Modern within the international contemporary art world."

In 2002, Salcedo lowered 280 chairs down the facade of the Palace of Justice in Bogota to pay homage to those killed in a failed guerrilla coup 17 years earlier.

A year later, she filled a derelict building plot with 1,500 wooden chairs to evoke the masses of "faceless" immigrants underpinning the economy.

Salcedo embedded wire mesh into gallery walls at the White Cube in London in 2004, but her work at Tate Modern will be her first public commission in the UK.

Other artists to have exhibited in the Turbine Hall include Louise Bourgeois, Juan Munoz, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman and Rachel Whiteread.