Fiona Rae

1 July 2002 - spring 2005

Supported by the Belle Shenkman Fund and Tate Catering

Fiona Rae's work fuses a multiplicity of imagery and ways of painting to give us a sensuous impression of contemporary life. Her dramatic three-panel painting, Shadowland, commissioned for Tate Modern Restaurant, continued this trend. Rae said of her ten metre wide triptych, 'I wanted the new paintings to be a representation of an imaginative place, something to do with my own frame of mind and thoughts at the time. Something a bit dramatic and high tech, like Tokyo street signs, dreamy and romantic like a fantasy book cover, or obsessive and threatening like Dürer's woodcuts and Hieronymus Bosch. I see these paintings as a synthesis of those kinds of feelings.' Curated by Emma Dexter assisted by Sophie Clark.

Julian Opie: Escaped Animals

13 July - 30 September 2002

Signs by Julian Opie were strategically placed outside galleries and museums in the UK including Tate Modern to herald the opening of Baltic, the new gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Julian Opie's work is based on the landscape - both urban and pastoral - of the developed world. His series of road signs, Escaped Animals, depicts thirteen creatures - including a fox, a deer, a rabbit, and a goose - represented as outline shapes against different coloured backgrounds. The graphic images were designed to be read and understood instantly, functioning as symbols for the things they represent and emphasizing their nature as commodities.