This month, Tate Britain unveils The Space Between, a display of contemporary works from Tate’s Collection, many of them recent acquisitions on show for the first time.
Artists whose work is included in the display are Claire Barclay, Anna Barriball, Karla Black, Alice Channer, Tacita Dean, Garth Evans, Graham Gussin, Robert Holyhead, Callum Innes, Ian Kiaer, Sarah Lucas, Lucy Skaer, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rebecca Warren, Rachel Whiteread and Alison Wilding.
The Space Between includes 32 works in which the physical properties of materials provides a common thread, and juxtaposes drawing, painting, photography, film, sculpture and installation. A group of Sarah Lucas’ NUDS sculptures of 2010, featuring ambiguous forms made of fluff-filled tights, and a hanging work composed of fabric and steel, Sleeve 2009 by Alice Channer, are shown alongside drawings made using correction fluid by Rachel Whiteread, a large scale painted photograph by Tacita Dean and projections of found slides by Anna Barriball.
Shown at last year’s Venice Biennale and recreated in the UK for the first time, Karla Black’s At Fault 2011uses paper, cellophane, bath salts and powder to form an installation that spills across an entire room. Ian Kiaer’s installation, Ulchiro Project 2007, combines an inflatable model made from bin liners with drawings and found objects to create a fragmentary narrative alluding to a market district in Seoul, South Korea.
In different ways the exhibited works reveal a preoccupation with the instability of materials, and a desire to capture something before it disappears. By focussing on the act of making in the creation of works that are often poised between the figurative and the abstract, these artists are exploring the potential for new meanings to emerge in the space between image and material.
The free eight room display is open until January 2013 and incorporates Tate Britain’s well-established Art Now series.
Art Now: Becky Beasley, until 2 September 2012
Becky Beasley’s The Outside 2012, an installation which incorporates photographs, was made following a visit to the private apartment of the Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino in Turin. Beasley discovered the blueprints for a pair of swing doors which Mollino designed but never produced. These became the inspiration for the works in Beasley’s Art Now presentation, also influenced by Mollino’s book Message from the Darkroom 1949, the first history of photography published in Italian.