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 explores a major strand of contemporary practice: the reuse and reworking 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 identifies 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. Many of the works in the Triennial focus on themes of repetition, reprocessing and the appropriation of images and facts, on a spectrum between tribute and pastiche.
The exhibition takes place in the Upper Galleries, the Lightbox space, Gallery 16 and the central Duveen sculpture galleries. A key aspect of this year’s Tate Triennial is the staging of a performance programme, which highlights 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, Linder, 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, Philippe Parreno, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, Olivia Plender, Muzi Quawson, Eva Rothschild, Tino Sehgal, John Stezaker, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rebecca Warren, Nicole Wermers and Cerith Wyn Evans.
The 2006 Triennial is 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.