Tate to showcase performance art

The Tate Modern is launching the world's first dedicated gallery space for performance and live art.

The museum's underground oil tanks will exhibit live art, performance, installation and film pieces and will open in July initially until the end of October as part of the London 2012 Festival.

Sir Nicholas Hytner, the director, said: "It is about elevating something that for years has been in the basement or on the fringes and taking it to the centre."

The massive industrial chambers were originally used to hold the oil that fuelled the power station that would later become the Tate Modern before it was decommissioned in 1981.