With support from The Ahmanson Foundation, The Starr Foundation and Mrs Coral Samuel CBE Media partner: Daily Telegraph.
The Pre-Raphaelite movement not only transformed subject painting but also fundamentally altered English approaches to landscape painting in the 1850s and remained influential long after. This exhibition was the first devoted specifically to Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting and presented some of the most memorable, closely observed, depictions of the natural world ever made. Tracing the development of an art movement that was deeply rooted in the scientific, religious and social culture of its age, the exhibition grouped works within the following themes: Selecting Nothing, Rejecting Nothing, The Mere Look of Things, Holy Lands, Understanding the Landscape, The Inhabited Landscape, and Impression of the Effect.
The exhibition was curated by Allen Staley and Christopher Newall (external curators), and Alison Smith, Ian Warrell and Tim Batchelor. The exhibition toured to Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and by Fundació ‘La Caixa’ in Madrid.
Supported by Tate Members
Media partner: Daily Telegraph
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was a unique collaboration between three of Britain's best-known contemporary artists. Angus Fairhurst, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas first met on the fine art course at Goldsmiths College, London, in 1986 and have remained close friends, influencing each other's work through a process of social interaction and intermittent collaboration. This was the first time that the three artists have worked together to realise a full-scale exhibition installation, which included new work by all the artists. The exhibition's title is a mangled version of the phrase ‘in the garden of Eden’, which occurs in a 1968 recording by the psychedelic rock band Iron Butterfly. Here it refers to the biblical theme of the exhibition, which was curated by Clarrie Wallis and Gregor Muir.
Supported by Tate Members, with additional support from The Henry Moore Foundation, Karsten Schubert, Thomas Dane and Alexander and Bonin
The 2004 Duveens Sculpture Commission was created by Michael Landy. Semi-detached was made with and about his father, a tunneller who was badly injured when a tunnel collapsed on him 26 years ago and who has not worked since. Typically uncompromising in scale and intention, Landy placed a replica of his parents' house, made to the exact size and from the same real materials, in the Duveen Galleries. By exploring the consequences of the accident on his father's life, the work addressed our received understanding of redundancy and the values we apply to ideas of usefulness, purpose and employment. These are issues that have been a concern throughout Landy's work. Our attitudes towards disability, medical facts and the limiting effects of these on an individual life through accident, were also questioned.
The exhibition was curated by Judith Nesbitt, with Carolyn Kerr and Lizzie Carey-Thomas.
Style wars in the garden do not simply echo social disputes or vested class interests. They also raise the more fundamental issues of how gardens as imaginative spaces, on the ground as well as in words and pictures, relate to the world beyond their walls or fences.
This exhibition examined the impact of the garden on the collective aesthetic sensibility over the past two hundred years and included works by artists featuring John Constable, Richard Dadd, James Tissot, Albert Moore, Spencer Gore, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Gary Hume and Mark Quinn. The exhibition took place during the bicentenary of the foundation of the Royal Horticultural Society, which designated 2004 as The Year of Gardening. The RHS marked their bicentenary with a series of special events and displays which were linked to the exhibition at Tate Britain.
This major survey of British art from 1956 to 1968 was drawn largely from Tate's collection but also included photography and architecture, as well as related contextual material. It focused on new languages and forms of art developed in the period, presenting an expanded art practice as part of a wider visual cultural context. The exhibition was complemented by a major three-part BBC TV series, which was broadcast as part of a 1960s season.
This exhibition was curated by Katharine Stout and Chris Stephens and travelled to Birmingham's Gashall Gallery; the Art Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and the Auckland Art Gallery.
The aim of this exhibition was to reflect upon what drawing can be; by exploring the process, the movements, rhythms and ruminations of the mind, the operations of thought and materialisation by means of gestural acts.
The exhibition presented over 120 drawings and nearly 30 prints from the Tate Collection. It ranged from the eighteenth century to the 1980s and featured artists such as Joshua Reynolds, William Blake, Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, Aubrey Beardsley, Man Ray, Francis Bacon, Kurt Schwitters, Eileen Agar, Barbara Hepworth, Eva Hesse, Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol.
The exhibition was selected from the Tate Collection by British artist Avis Newman, and was curated by Catherine de Zegher, Director of The Drawing Center, New York. The exhibition toured The Drawing Centre, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and Tate Liverpool.
This was the first major exhibition to show the work of Augustus John and Gwen John together. Augustus was among the most esteemed modern British artists of his generation, but since the 1950s, his reputation dwindled and was in need of review. Gwen, in contrast, has been the subject of increasing critical and popular attention in Britain and abroad. The exhibition, which focused on the period of Gwen's life (ending c1939), showed both painters to be innovative artists who, although sharing common roots, developed quite different responses to the world. In their differing flights from the modern world into individual worlds of fantasy and in their techniques and processes, both artists were revealed as major figures in British Modernism.
The exhibition was selected by David Fraser Jenkins and Chris Stephens, supported by Tim Batchelor. The exhibition toured, in a reduced capacity, to the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff.
Sponsored by Gordon’s Gin
The four short-listed artists were Kutlug Ataman, Jeremy Deller, Langlands & Bell, and Yinka Shonibare. The 2004 Turner Prize was awarded to Jeremy Deller. The exhibition was curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Carolyn Kerr and Rachel Tant.
Sponsored by Gordon's Gin
The four artists short-listed were Darren Almond, Gillian Carnegie, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling. The Turner Prize 2005 was awarded to Simon Starling. The exhibition was curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Rachel Tant.
This project was the first in a series of three module exhibitions at Tate Britain. The Rego exhibition focused on three distinct periods of Rego's career and featured key works from Tate's Collection. These included The Firemen of Alijo 1966, The Dance 1988 and The Betrothal: The Shipwreck, after 'Marriage a la Mode' by Hogarth 1999. By setting these works in context, Tate Britain was able to show, for the first time in Britain, a significant group of Rego's major early works, her newest triptych, Pillowman 2004, as well as a number of iconic paintings such as The Policeman's Daughter 1987.
Sir Anthony Caro is widely regarded as one of the greatest living British
sculptors. This major retrospective exhibition surveyed more than 50
years of work, from the early 1950s to the present day. During the 1960s
Caro established a reputation as the most influential sculptor of his
generation, and the exhibition presented key works from that innovative
period in the context of recent work, including the Last Judgement
1996–9 installation, in which new lines of thought were apparent.
One of the highlights of the exhibition was a new, large-scale sculpture,
commissioned for the South Duveen Gallery, which explored Caro's engagement
with the relation of sculpture to architecture. In drawing together
these diverse developments, the exhibition was an important milestone
in assessing the achievement of this internationally renowned figure.
The exhibition was curated by Paul Moorhouse. A selection of works from
the exhibition toured to the Institute Valencia d'Art Moderne.
Although Rex Whistler and Claude Monet were close friends and collaborators for almost 30 years and were admirers of JMW Turner at different times in their lives, this exhibition was the first to explore the nature and significance of this artistic triangle, as well as aiming to trace the evolution of the impressionist and symbolist landscape.
The exhibition examined a pattern of themes and variations inaugurated by Turner that appear to have been adopted and developed in the artistic dialogue between Whistler and Monet. The changes rung in turn by Turner, Whistler and Monet constituted one of the most fertile artistic dialogues of the late nineteenth century and provided a window through which to view the relationship between English and French art.
The exhibition was organised by the Art Gallery of Ontario in partnership with the Musée D’Orsay and Tate and showed at all three venues.
This was the first ever Joshua Reynolds exhibition at Tate and was based upon a simple premise: the highly successful career of the portrait painter was built upon his exploitation of the cult of celebrity, which was in turn a cornerstone of eighteenth-century British cultural life.
During his lifetime Reynolds was among the most celebrated artists in the Western world. Many of his greatest portraits were of the most famous individuals of the age: actors, writers, intellectuals, courtesans, aristocrats, military leaders, and politicians. But Reynolds did not simply paint these individuals. He befriended them, brought them into contact with one another, shaped their public images and massaged their egos. Through his friendships, his portraits, and his manipulation of the media, Reynolds was – as this exhibition revealed – a driving force in the generation of the modern-day cult of the celebrity.
The exhibition was curated by Martin Postle and Ben Tufnell and travelled to Ferrara Arte, Italy.
Picture of Britain was a unique collaboration between Tate Britain and the BBC. The exhibition looked at the rural landscape in mainland Britain through the eyes of artists since the eighteenth century. Organised into six regions, it concentrated on the works of major painters from JMW Turner and John Constable to LS Lowry and Barbara Hepworth through a series of themes such as industrialisation, war and peace, and the picturesque. These themes guided the visitor through the rich and varied landscape in an informative and stimulating way, covering many aspects of the art, culture and social history of Britain.
Alongside major oil paintings and watercolours, were drawings, prints, photographs, books, posters, ceramics, sculpture and other material conveying the rich and varied ways in which the rural British landscape has shaped and been shaped by artists over the last three centuries.
The exhibition was curated by David Brown, Richard Humphreys and Christine Riding.
Focusing on the impact of Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the highly original contributions of Walter Richard Sickert, this major exhibition was the first to explore the creative dialogue between British and French artists in the late nineteenth century. The selection of works by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec concentrated on pieces that were known to have been actually exhibited in British galleries and which hung in British collections. The exhibition was be structured broadly chronologically – with sections dedicated to the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s – and a final selection of works by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Sickert revealed a hitherto unconsidered creative union between these three artists. A special section of the exhibition focused on a single work, Degas's famous L'Absinthe 1876 and its controversial reception in Britain.
The exhibition was curated by Dr Anna Gruetzner Robins, University of Reading, and Richard Thomson, University of Edinburgh. It travelled to the Phillips Collection, Washington.
One of the most important photographers of the nineteenth-century, Roger Fenton exerted a profound influence on the medium despite the fact that his career lasted only eleven years. During this time, Fenton produced a varied body of work that represented one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of photography, and which covered landscape, architectural views, orientalism, portraits of the royal family, still lifes and the galleries of the British Museum. He was also commissioned by Thomas Agnew, under the direct patronage of Queen Victoria, to document the Crimean War. These photographs are among the first ever to depict war.
The exhibition was the largest ever to have been devoted to this photographer and was organised by the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. It was shown at these three venues before opening at Tate Britain.
The period from 1770 to 1830 was one of turbulent change and brilliant innovation in the visual arts in Britain, exemplified by the fantastic paintings and drawings of Henry Fuseli and the visionary work of William Blake. Focusing on these artists and their contemporaries, this exhibition was the first to survey supernatural, visionary and apocalyptic themes in the art of this period. It demonstrated how the artists laid the foundations of Gothic horror and fantasy, creating sensational and bizarre images which have had a decisive influence on modern culture. A special feature of the exhibition was the recreation of a Phantasmagoria and a section dedicated to the pervasive influence of the nightmare in art, literature and cinema.
The show was conceived by Martin Myrone of Tate Britain, working closely with Professor Sir Christopher Frayling and Professor Marina Warner.
The third Tate Triennial featured artists from across different generations who work with a diverse range of media from film, painting, photography and sculpture to installation and live work. Many of the works in the exhibition focused on the themes of repetition, reprocessing and the appropriation of images and facts, on a spectrum between tribute and pastiche. The combination of different visual codes and imagery, often from competing rather than connecting influences, were used by artists to create highly personal languages with forms ranging from the classic reiteration of motifs, collage and montage to file-sharing and digital reproduction. While these approaches are most commonly associated with postmodernism, the Triennial revealed how an entirely new range of possibilities was reinvigorating such processes in current art practice.
Tate Triennial 2006 was selected by Beatrix Ruf, Director
of the Kunsthalle Zurich, working alongside three Tate Curators: Carolyn
Kerr, Katharine Stout and Clarrie Wallis.
