Untitled launched a series of small-scale projects within a specially designed space at Tate Modern, dedicated to showcasing recent or new work by international contemporary artists not widely exhibited in the UK. The first year's programme of six projects entitled The Public World of the Private Space, curated by Susan May, considered the human condition in public and private environments, and in particular, the representation of space in these spheres.
The series began with the work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. They live and work in Berlin. Elmgreen and Dragset have collaborated since 1995 and their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design. For Untitled, Elmgreen and Dragset created a site-specific work involving an animatronic model of a dying sparrow, a poignant metaphor for the relationship of art to the institutional convention of the white cube space.
The exhibition was curated by Susan May.
This exhibition introduced three artists, Julia Loktev, Julika Rudelius and Cui Xiuwen, each of whom adopt the style of documentary film-making to explore private experience in public places. The first exhibition for each artist in Britain, the films included Julia Loktev’s Said in Passing 2000, Cui Xiuwen's Ladies 2000, and Julika Rudelius's Looking at the other/desire 2003. Where Loktev’s film of women travelling on a New York subway combined realism with fiction, Cui Xiuwen’s work confronted female sexuality in modern China by using low-fi surveillance technology in a documentary style, filming behind the scenes in the toilets of a glitzy Beijing ‘escort’ club. Rudelius’s video, which was projected against the window of the gallery and viewed from outside, employed the methods and styles associated with documentary film-making, but also explored the way in which events are reconstructed in the editing process. Loktev lives and works in New York. Rudelius lives and works in Amsterdam. Cui lives and works in Beijing.
The project was curated by Juliet Bingham.
Born in Mali in 1985, Camara began taking photos of domestic interiors in the capital Bamako when he was given a camera at the age of sixteen. Discreet yet direct, these photographs offer a penetrating look at their creator’s country and its inhabitants. These works are meticulously composed by colour, light and shadow, and the formal invention and delicacy of Camara’s works subtly recall formal structures and motifs – such as curtains, lying and sleeping figures or windows – by artists like Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. The framing and ‘snapshot’ quality of the photographs also echo the techniques employed in photo journalism. The Chambres Maliennes series was displayed alongside new works, including his first video, which were especially created for the Untitled series.
The project was curated by Vincent Honoré.
The artists in this group show included Matt Bryans, Amie Dicke, Godfried Donkor, Dr Lakra, Wangechi Mutu, Jockum Nordstrum, Stephen Shearer and Nicole Wermers. Many of the exhibiting artists take ‘found’ materials from the public realm, such as newspapers, magazines and books, and transform them, by a variety of simple and yet ingenious processes, into something personal, strange, enchanting or haunting. The exhibition included Dr Lakra’s entirely tattooed pin-up girls, Wangechi Mutu’s hybridised monster models and Godfried Donkor’s ironic juxtapositions of glamour, slavery and money. Pin Up combined the political edginess of collage with the subjectivity of drawing, fusing the public and the private in new and unusual ways.
The project was curated by Emma Dexter.
The collaborative group Simparch, led by Matt Lynch and Steven Badgett, create large-scale interactive artworks which examine building practices and the concept of site specificity. The ethos that art should act as a framework for social interaction is central to their work. At Tate Modern, Simparch designed and built a new structure that existed within, and yet tested the physical limits of, the Untitled space. Conflating the domestic furniture projects set out in a 1960s DIY manual titled Plywood Working for Everybody with temporarily constructed FBI 'houses' built in the American desert for shooting target practice, the artists created an installation viewable through the window of the space that resembled an 'ideal home' shop display. However, it was populated with a cast of posters of drawn and photographic 'target' figures used in police shooting practice, commenting on the violent underpinnings to both American domestic and foreign policies.
The project was curated by Catherine Wood.
Mexican artist Damián Ortega often takes commonplace objects and then deconstructs or reconfigures them, forcing the viewer to reconsider their perception of the object and its original function. Inspired by a conversation Ortega had with a physics professor about Quantum Mechanics, which reinforced his interest in notions of instability and flux, Ortega created a number of new works for his installation in the Untitled gallery. Subverting the notion of sculpture as finished and monumental, Ortega intends to stir up doubts. The three wooden constructions in 3 Stones/Constructive Failure were presented by the artist as a work in progress that could continue to grow, or be rearranged into new configurations. In Phenomenon of Rotation a string of globes snaking across the floor represented the world turning. Their increasing size and varying states of decay could suggest earth’s cycles of evolution, deterioration and change. In Spiral of Violence the frame and shattered panes of a window were suspended in a spiral formation as if catapulted into space by a violent impact on the window frame. Ortega also systematically divided the panes, increasing the number of sections until the last pane is in sixteen sections. The work suggests that violence leads to more violence, but it also resembles the Union Jack, prompting us to consider the relationship between violence and symbols of national identity.
The project was curated by Helen Sainsbury.
In 2005, the Untitled Series continued under a new pragmatic title: Level 2 Gallery Series. The 2005–6 series was curated by Jessica Morgan.
Meschac Gaba’s works examine the cultural and economic codes of exchange between Africa and the West by engaging visitors in an exchange of ideas. The final form of Gaba's installations are left open to be shaped by the desires and actions of those who visit. His previous works include the ten-part installation The Museum of Contemporary African Art. Individual elements of this hypothetical institution were placed in other galleries and museums, such as The Architecture of the Museum where visitors built their fantasy museum using wooden Lego blocks. Gaba created an installation inspired by the Nobel Peace Prize. The artist also carried out a performance outside the gallery on the opening night.
The project was curated by Ben Borthwick.
Belgian artist Jan De Cock created a series of large-scale installations which extended beyond the Level 2 Gallery space and into the main circulation routes used by visitors to Tate Modern, including the terraces outside the Members Room and the concourses between the collection galleries. These works mimicked functional gallery furniture, such as gallery seating and information desks, but were clearly non-functional and also seemed bizarrely at odds with their environment, being constructed from green plywood. Made in response to the gallery's architecture, the works surprised and amused visitors as they progressed around Tate Modern's vast space. During the summer months, De Cock and his team assembled the project in a specially designed area in front of the north façade of the gallery, so the public could observe their work as it progressed.
The project was curated by Jessica Morgan, assisted by Ann Coxon.
American artist Catherine Sullivan’s work explores the mechanics of expression by focusing on the emotional tension that occurs during a performance, between the intensive experience of those performing and its reception by the audience. For her first UK exhibition, Sullivan presented a new multi-screen video The Chittendens, which was based on the intersection of contemporary dance, live art, performance and video. This powerful work demonstrated how a conceptual pattern could be reinterpreted to become a highly theatrical artwork. Produced in collaboration with the composer Sean Griffin, it encouraged the viewer to consider how a performer’s gestures could adopt the logical structure of a musical score and become a choreographic and cinematic art work.
The project was curated by Vincent Honoré.
Simryn Gill’s work questions the coherence of systems that humans create to ‘know’ the world around them. Working with a myriad of materials, including books, plant materials, photographs and other found objects, she encourages the viewer to reject a rigid classification of their surroundings in favour of arrangements which offer uncertainty, disturbance and new possibilities. For the Level 2 Gallery, Gill created a thought-provoking installation from a collection of books assembled over many years. Ranging from pulp fiction to academic writings, these publications provided the raw material which Gill then used to tease out a supposedly ‘neutral’ set of words. Gill was born in Singapore in 1959. She now lives in Sydney, Australia and works from Australia and Malaysia.
The project was curated by Juliet Bingham.
