Tate Britain Throughout the gallery
1 March – 14 May 2006
The third Tate Triennial at Tate Britain is curated by German curator Beatrix Ruf and takes an international perspective on the current British art scene. Ruf is the Director and Curator of Kunsthalle Zürich and for this exhibition she has selected work from different generations of British artists working in a diverse range of media.
The Triennial will explore a major strand of contemporary practice: the appropriation or re-working of cultural material. While the requisition and juxtaposition of images, facts and formal elements is a well recognised strategy most commonly associated with post-modernism, the Triennial will identify a significant re-invigoration and transformation in such processes in current practice.
Various approaches to the use of reference material can be detected within the different generations of artists represented in the show: from John Stezaker’s Masks, an ongoing series of collages where postcards of landscapes obscure portraits of 1950’s film stars to Luke Fowler’s new film which uses archive material to explore the history of the English composer Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra. For many of the artists, visual codes and imagery from competing rather than connecting influences are combined to create highly personal languages and fresh narratives. For example Rebecca Warren draws from a variety of sources, ranging from Degas to Helmut Newton and Robert Crumb, to create roughly modelled clay figures. Artists are forging new ways of apprehending reality, re-working ideas of authenticity and directness, often revisiting artistic practices that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
The exhibition will take place in the Upper Galleries, the Lightbox space and the central Duveen sculpture galleries. A key aspect of this year’s Tate Triennial is the staging of a performance programme, which will highlight the collaborative nature and multi-disciplinary practices of many of the artists selected.
List of artists: Pablo Bronstein, Angela Bulloch, Gerard Byrne, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Lali Chetwynd, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Enrico David, Peter Doig, Kaye Donachie, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Luke Fowler, Michael Fullerton, Ryan Gander, Liam Gillick, Douglas Gordon, Mark Leckey, Lucy McKenzie, Daria Martin, Simon Martin, Alan Michael, Jonathan Monk, Scott Myles, Christopher Orr, The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar and Richard Couzins), Djordje Ozbolt, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, Olivia Plender, Muzi Quawson, Eva Rothschild, Tino Sehgal, Linder Sterling, John Stezaker, Rebecca Warren, Nicole Wermers and Cerith Wyn Evans.
The 2006 Triennial will be shaped and delivered by an internal team of four Associate Curators, Carolyn Kerr, Katharine Stout, Clarrie Wallis and Catherine Wood. The exhibition is part of an ongoing strand of major exhibitions of contemporary art presented every three years at Tate Britain. The first Tate Triennial, Intelligence, was held in 2000 and the second Days Like These, in 2003.
Tate Triennial 2006 is supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2006. During the Triennial, the Foundation will also be lending to Tate Britain’s Collection Displays a number of works from its important collection of modern British art in Lisbon.