Burçak Bingöl: Minor Vibrations on Earth

15 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
Open daily 10.00 – 17.20
For public information call +44(0)20 7887 8888, visit tate.org.uk or follow @Tate

This autumn Tate St Ives opens an exhibition of new work by Turkish artist Burçak Bingöl. Entitled Minor Vibrations on Earth, the exhibition is the result of Bingöl’s 2022 residency in St Ives, from which she has created a new installation combining traditional ceramics with modern styles and forms.

Bingöl’s work embraces the mistakes and accidents that occur during the process of making. The action of rebuilding from these accidents becomes a metaphor for the continued disintegration and reconstruction of cultural traditions and heritage. Evoking this feeling of transformation, her installation at Tate St Ives resembles a kiln during the firing process, full of fragile clay objects which appear broken, melting or incomplete. The artist describes this moment as ‘interrupted halfway through’, words recalling Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s 1946 collection of essays Beş Şehir (Five Cities) about urban transformation in Turkey. Bingöl makes connections between two of those cities – Ankara and Istanbul – and Cornwall in the UK through a poem installed on the walls of the gallery.

Minor Vibrations on Earth draws on both the rich ceramic history of Turkey and the artistic heritage of St Ives. Turkey has long been a site where different traditions have met through the exchange of imagery, ideas, people and goods. Bingöl preserves and disrupts these histories, integrating them with specific references to figures local to St Ives: The potter Bernard Leach is echoed in the use of Cornish clay, and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth is suggested through a sculpture laced with strings. Delicate flowers from Hepworth’s garden are also referenced as transfer prints, placed alongside images showing the demolition of cultural buildings in Turkey. In merging traditional and contemporary forms and imagery, Bingöl challenges us to consider how modernisation drives the identity of a place and creates experiences of belonging or dislocation.

Burçak Bingöl was born 1976 in Görele, raised in Ankara, and now lives and works in Istanbul. The exhibition is curated by Anne Barlow, Director of Tate St Ives, with Giles Jackson, Assistant Curator. SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey supported Bingöl’s research, residency and production for the exhibition.

The exhibition coincides with Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life, a landmark retrospective at Tate St Ives featuring over 50 of Hepworth’s iconic sculptures. Open from 26 November 2022 to 1 May 2023, the show celebrates one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century and the special significance of St Ives on her work.