Tate Modern – The Cultural Exposé

Something you should see… Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden

Laura Thornley — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 11:00:46 +0000

South African born artist Marlene Dumas gets the retrospective treatment at Tate Modern this February. Having come to prominence in the 1980s, Dumas is now widely considered as one of the greatest female painters working today and a complete devotee to her medium. This exhibition may well be contemporary painting at its best.

Throughout the modern period, the medium of painting has been at odds with the development of photography and mass media. But Dumas has always believed in the power of painting and continually uses it to play with the complexities of representing the human form: painting still touches us, she believes, despite its years of turmoil.

Marlene Dumas The Widow 2013 Private Collection © Marlene Dumas

Still, while devoted to this style of art, one of Dumas’ biggest inspirations is photography and specifically the work of Diane Arbus. Her work similarly explores ideas around sexuality, popular culture, current affairs and identity. Almost always she takes her subject matter from a photograph or her images are torn from magazines. Figures are taken out of their context and isolated on her canvas.

Dumas continually references contemporary life and her subject matter is often current, and occasionally controversial: Amy Winehouse, Naomi Campbell, Princess Diana, even Osama bin Laden have all been presented in a fashion. Her work may also touch on some of the anxieties and trauma that haunt our society, but its beauty is truly moving. Not to be missed. (Words: Laura Thornley)

On until 10 May 2015. For more info visit: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/marlene-dumas-image-burden

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Something you should see… Richard Hamilton at Tate Modern

Laura Thornley — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 11:00:32 +0000

If there ever were a barometer to measure the earliest proponents of Pop Art, those included in the exhibition This is Tomorrow would be a good place to start. The exhibition, curated by Bryan Robertson at the Whitechapel in 1956, gave space to numerous architects, graphic designers, musicians and artists that are often credited with kick starting the British Pop Art scene. Richard Hamilton was one of the many artists whose vision of the modern world played a seminal part in the controversial show. His name has won a place in art history and three years after his death, this retrospective at the Tate offers an insight into his life work and collaborations.

Hamilton is most famous for his collages and Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? represents his most well-known work. His use of everyday images served as a humorous and quite accurate account of the modern age and where it was going. Credited with insight into popular culture that went beyond his time, Hamilton’s work is still fresh and relevant today, making this retrospective at the Tate essential viewing. Interested in everything from interior design, products, mass media and later art and politics, his work celebrated the nuances of pop whilst exposing its many contradictory and destructive elements.

Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? by Richard Hamilton (1956)

Central to the exhibition is the installation Fun House 1956, a room filled with magazine imagery, film posters and art history; a droll slice of modern age, glamour, celebrity culture and knowing nudges.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of events including reflections on his work by prominent thinkers such as Hal Foster and Mark Godfrey. There will also be a close up of his politically motivated work of the 1980s that focused on the Margaret Thatcher years and the IRA as well as a weeklong specialist collage course. (Words: Laura Thornley)

The exhibition runs from 13 February to 26 May. For more info visit: www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/richard-hamilton

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Something You Should See… Endless Stair

Lucy Palmer — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:32:33 +0000

Personally I blame the Shard, that’s what started this obsession with things in London being high and tall. There’s no more mere five storey buildings for us – if you don’t have to crane your neck to look at its very top, it’s just not getting built in the capital anymore. While not quite skyscraper status, the Endless Stair installation – with its 187 steps – will allow visitors to climb up towards the sky and provide a new viewing platform and feature in London’s attractions. The 436 metre interactive structure is made of a series of 20 interlocking staircases, inspired by drawings of M.C. Escher which is clearly evident when viewing the structure. From photos the piece slightly resembles a children’s jungle playground frame with visitors navigating the steps which turn up and down, left, right and everywhere testing our visual and physical perceptions. Located just outside the famous riverbank art space of the Tate Modern the new installation is being raved as one of the landmark and pivotal pieces from this year’s London Design Festival and was designed by architectural firm dRMM.Endless Stair can accommodate a maximum of 93 people at a time so arrive early or be prepared for queues. (Words: Lucy Palmer) On until 10th October 2013, admission is free. For more info, visit www.londondesignfestival.com/endless-stair

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Something you should see… Lichtenstein: A Retrospective at Tate Modern

Laura Thornley — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:00:27 +0000

Up there with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most recognisable American modern artists going – and similarly the creator of some of the most bastardised work around. Most people are more likely to have seen his work emblazoned on a gift mug, a novelty T-shirt or a placemat, rather than an art gallery wall. So, the new Lichtenstein retrospective at the Tate Modern, the first of its kind for 20s years, comes as a pleasant surprise – and a pretty good opportunity for his fans.

Masterpiece, 1962 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Every good pop artist had a fascination with consumer culture and the visual language of the mass media; Lichtenstein was no different. Famed for his use of the old-fashioned comic strip to convey puns and innuendos, his work is both accessible and instantly recognisable. Most of his work carried his trademark humour, mimicking, with just a hint of irony, the two dimensional characters of popular culture.

This opportunity to get up-close and personal with the work will also reveal his attention to detail, as we coloured his images with the same Ben-Day spots used in the printing process. This pain-staking process became a signature style for Lichtenstein for most of his career, even taking the dots into his large sculptures. Luckily, the entire artist’s oeuvre are explored in the show, which includes 125 works of his paintings and sculptures, giving a full dissection of the range of surfaces and materials he used to achieve his visions.

His prolific career, which ran into the 1990s, is often overlooked or reduced to a graphic composition, by the means of mass production he himself chose to highlight. Hopefully, this exhibition should serve to readdress this balance. A must-see. (Words: Laura Thornley)

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective is on until May 27th. For more info visit: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/lichtenstein

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Something you should see… A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance at Tate Modern

Laura Thornley — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:00:13 +0000

Art went through a fascinating change during the first half of the 20th century, if that isn’t underestimating it a little. It moved towards the abstract, which still fascinates and preoccupies art enthusiasts today. For all its highbrow exclusivity and outdated attitudes, the insular soul-searching of this period helped create so many dynamic and original art movements – just like the one Tate Modern is giving space to this winter.

Painting after Performance uses the idea of Action Painting as its theme and traces evidences of this from the 1950s up to the present day. Also known as “gestural abstraction”, this is how artists transformed painting into a performative act; like Jackson Pollock did by dripping paint, like the shooting of canvases with air rifles by Niki de Saint Phalle.

The wealth of artists taking part is fascinating and gives some much deserved space to performance artists who still tend to be sidelined such as Cindy Sherman, Pinot Gallizio and the Japanese artistic movement The Gutai Group. The Tate may be putting its usual spin on some of these historical art groupings but it’s a curatorial coup that the Tate tends to get away with. The exhibition is a great opportunity to see some amazing pieces under a lesser-spotted theme – and there will be queues, but you shouldn’t let that put you off. (Words: Laura Thornley)

A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance is on at the Tate until April 1st, 2013. For more info, visit www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/bigger-splash-painting-after-performance

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Something you should see… William Klein & Daido Moriyama at Tate Modern

Eri Otite — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:00:07 +0000

Flights to Tokyo and New York are not exactly the cheapest these days, so an exhibition offering you the chance to explore these two great cities while remaining on UK soil, surely can’t be sniffed at? Portraits of these two cities by photographers William Klein and Daido Moriyama can currently be seen at Tate Modern in an exhibition that examines the relationship between the artists. On show are nearly 300 works including prints, film stills and photographic installations that capture the modern urban experience from the 1950s to now. From anti-war demonstrations to gay pride marches, a gun-toting kid to a couple holding groceries – all aspects of street life is observed.

Originally a painter, Klein’s distinct approach to photography – blurred or out of focus pictures, the use of high-grain film – shares a visual affinity with Moriyama. Klein’s seminal 1956 publication Life is Good & Good for You in New York depicted the city as crude and vulgar. This was a photographic language that would resonate with Moriyama in his gritty post-war images of Tokyo. Not just a photojournalist, Klein also contributed to the fashion pages of Vogue. His use of the wide-angle lens and long exposures are some of the techniques he introduced to fashion photography.

Moriyama made his name in the Japanese avant garde publication Provoke. Launched in the late 1960s, the magazine sought to counter prevailing photographic conventions with a more radical visual vocabulary. Although it only ran for three issues, Provoke is now recognised as an important turning point in Japanese photography. Issues of Provoke magazine are on display at Tate Modern, as are Klein’s Vogue pictures. Installations relating to Klein’s films Mister Freedom and Who Are You Polly Magoo also feature, as does a reconstruction of Moriyama’s studio through the arrangement of Polaroid images. Although born ten years apart, what unifies this double retrospective on two very influential photographers is more than just an aesthetic sensibility, but their love of life on the street. This really is worth a visit and it is of course, much cheaper than an air ticket. (Words: Eri Otite)

William Klein & Daido Moryiama on at Tate Modern until January 20th 2013. For more info, visit www.tate.org.uk

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Something you should see…Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern

The Cultural Exposé — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:00:34 +0000

The Empty Shoe Box you see in the middle of the fourth floor of Tate Modern isn’t just any old shoe box… it’s an Orozco shoe box. Reminiscent of how he found it to be something he could use to easily transport his belongings from one place to another, he reinterprets the idea of movement, the notion of constantly accumulating different places on his many travels with his biggest exhibition yet.

(To read the rest, visit our Tumblr blog…)

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