Horizontal Movement

1963, Jesus Rafael Soto

As the spectator passes this work, an optical effect causes the background of black and white lines to vibrate and flicker. Soto described Horizontal Movement as ‘one of the first truly mobile works that I had made’, referring to the addition of an iron rod that hangs in front of the lines. As in all his works the background lines are drawn by hand.

Gallery label, September 2004

Liquid Crystal Environment

1965, remade 2005, Gustav Metzger

Liquid Crystal Environment consists of five projectors, each with a single slide containing liquid crystals. The projectors are equipped with rotating polarising filters and a cooling and heating system that cause the liquid crystal to liquefy or freeze, creating psychedelic effects of shifting colour and form.

The work was first realised as a performance and recreated in 2005 for the Summer of Love exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Metzger worked closely with electrical engineer Adrian Fogarty to simulate the 1965–6 projections, fabricating custom built control units and creating software to control projector temperature, brightness of the lamp, and the rotation of the polarising filter.

Gallery label, January 2016

Room Situation

1970, Vito Acconci

Room Situation documents a performance entitled Room Piece that was staged over three weekends in January 1970. Each weekend, Acconci moved furniture and objects from his New York apartment to a gallery eighty blocks uptown. If he needed any of these items, he would return to the gallery to borrow them, and take them back when he had finished using them. The distinction between the artist''s home and his gallery, and between his private and public activities, became increasingly blurred.

Gallery label, September 2004

In the Bush

1972, Gilbert & George

Collaborative art duo Gilbert & George adopted the identity of ‘living sculptures’ in their art and daily lives. They started making films to reach a wider audience. In The Bush sees them in London’s Kew Gardens, strolling by a tree they thought was the wildest in the park. The soundtrack is from a BBC recording of bird sounds. Placing themselves in a cultivated landscape, but beside an untamed-looking tree, they seem to ask us to have a sceptical if detached eye when thinking about conventionally accepted appearances and behaviours.

Gallery label, September 2023

Performances II

1973, Rebecca Horn

Horn designed these ‘body extensions’ for herself and her friends. They limit or expand how a person can move and interact with their environment. These performances were made specifically for the camera. They show how the sculptures change the wearers’ relationship to the surrounding space and to other people. Horn has commented: ‘Looking back at these first pieces you always see a kind of cocoon, which I used to protect myself. Like the fans where I can lock myself in, enclose myself, then open and integrate another person into an intimate ritual. This intimacy of feeling and communication was a central part in the performances.’

Gallery label, May 2019

Monument

1980–1, Susan Hiller

Monument explores memory, death, history, heroism, representation and time. Its subject is taken from a series of Victorian ceramic tiles photographed by Hiller in a London park. These commemorate acts of courage by ordinary men, women and children. Hiller's greatly enlarged photographs draw attention to changes wrought by time and have a powerful formal presence. The sound track, which the viewer should listen to after looking at the photographs, is crucial to an understanding of work; it makes the viewer/listener an active participant and an integral part of the installation when seen by other spectators. Hiller pioneered installation in the early 1980s. The combination here of sound and image was innovatory.

Gallery label, August 2004

The Carrot Piece

1985, Lubaina Himid CBE RA

The Carrot Piece shows a white man failing to tempt a black woman with a carrot. Her arms are already full with everything she needs. Himid says that when the work was made, cultural institutions ‘needed to be seen’ to be integrating black people into their programmes and ‘we as black women understood how we were being patronised ... to be cajoled and distracted by silly games and pointless offers. We understood, but we knew what sustained us… and what we really needed to make a positive cultural contribution: self-belief, inherited wisdom, education and love.’

Gallery label, July 2017

preserve ‘beauty’

1991–2003, Anya Gallaccio

Gallaccio works with organic, perishable materials such as ice, flowers, fruits and sugar. This installation challenges romantic ideas associated with flowers and our relationship to nature. Gallaccio has described cut flowers as a mass-produced ‘disposable commodity’. The word ‘beauty’ in the title refers to a variety of cultivated gerbera. It is also a play on words, as the flowers are left to wither and rot. Gallaccio calls her work a ‘performance between myself and the material’. She says it is a collaboration with the viewers experiencing this temporary artwork.

Gallery label, January 2020

Current Disturbance

1996, Mona Hatoum

Referencing both the human body and rigid systems of abstraction, the installation Current Disturbance 1996 is made from an immense grid of over 200 cages, light bulbs and the amplified sound of electric currents. As the bulbs light up and fade out at irregular intervals, they sporadically illuminate the surrounding gallery. Inside each of the cages rests a single lightbulb, all interconnected via a central convergence. Another single bulb is suspended inside the structure, illuminating the junction box at the centre. The grid of metal cages sets up a contrast between the sense of systematization and the chaos of randomised flashing lights and the mess of wiring covering the floor. The tension arising from this juxtaposition of elements serves to intensify the feeling of suspended energy and instability, inspiring a certain discomfort in the viewer.

Psalms

1997, Donald Rodney

Psalms 1997 consists of an empty motorised wheelchair to which the artist added a neural computer, sensors and a camera. It is programmed to navigate independently through the gallery space, following a carefully scored path in a figure of eight configuration. Whenever the wheelchair encounters an object or person in its path, it stops moving. The number eight references harmony, peace and balance, but also represents infinity. Psalms bears testament to Rodney’s thinking around his own physical frailty and eventual absence as he was dealing with sickle cell anemia and preparing for hip replacement surgery which would drastically impact his mobility. Psalms uses eight sonar sensors, shaft-encoders, a video camera and a rate gyroscope to determine its position in the gallery. For this complex construction, Rodney collaborated with robotic technology specialists Guido Bugmann and Mike Philips. The team received funding from the Henry Moore Foundation for the development of the work. This collaborative way of working was typical during the late stages of Rodney’s career.

Museum Restaurant From Museum of Contemporary African Art

1997–2002, Meschac Gaba

The Museum Restaurant is one section of Meschac Gaba’s multi-part installation the Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002. The Museum Restaurant is to be activated periodically throughout its display. A different artist or curator is tasked with designing the menu and cooking a simple evening meal for twenty or so guests, for which the guests are asked to pay a relatively modest amount. The restaurant can be decorated by the person in charge of the meal, but is to include the lamps which come with the work and plastic tablecloths. Simple tables, seating, ceramic crockery and cutlery are also provided. A hand-written menu and the names of the guests are displayed on the wall. Between these evening meals, it is the artist’s intention that the Museum Restaurant should be available for public use.

Drawing a Line Through Landscape

2017, Nikhil Chopra

Drawing a Line Through Landscape is a large-scale, tent-shaped multimedia work that derives from a performance made by the artist for Documenta 14 in 2017. It consists of what the artist describes as the residues of resulting from one of his most ambitious performances to date. On the occasion of Documenta, Chopra travelled overland between Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany – the two Documenta venues – for three weeks (between May and June 2017), stopping and pitching a tent in the countryside, in abandoned villages and in cities including Ionnina, Tsarino, Sofia, Gorna Lipnitsa, Cozia, Budapest, Sturovo and Bratislava.

Life of Imitation

2009, Ming Wong

In these billboard paintings, Ming Wong expands the fictional universe of his video installation Life of Imitation to include promotional posters. These artworks are reminiscent of the ‘golden age’ of Singaporean cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Hand-painted billboards were traditionally used to advertise new releases, considered to be newsworthy events in a time when films could only be consumed as communal events in movie theatres.

Gallery label, November 2022

Behold

2009, Sheela Gowda

Behold 2009 is an immersive large-scale installation by the South Indian artist Sheela Gowda. This work consists of four kilometres of hand knotted rope and approximately twenty car bumpers. The bumpers are suspended against the gallery wall, individually or in sets, from ropes made of braided human hair, which are knotted around the metal. The ropes extend irregularly between the hanging bumpers in small and large loops, as well as being gathered on the floor in piles and heaps, some of which can also be suspended from the ceiling. In this way the installation can take over a single gallery space or occupy a single stretch of wall.

Meditation (with open eyes)

2011, Atul Dodiya

Atul Dodiya’s Meditation (with open eyes) pays tribute to artists and cultural figures who have inspired him. Dodiya has brought together a range of portraits and objects which relate to his upbringing and artistic development. They are arranged in glass cabinets that resemble museum showcases. But they also recall personal displays of souvenirs and sentimental items that are common in Indian homes. The cabinets also act as shrines, celebrating the lives of these inspirational figures. The objects range from the sacred to the everyday. Copies of artworks by other artists as well as those made by Dodiya sit next to photographs and miniature figurines, including incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. The cracked surface reminded Dodiya of the damaged landscape of his native state of Gujarat in India, where a major earthquake had just taken place.

Gallery label, August 2020

Rusty Mirage (The City Skyline)

2013, Kiluanji Kia Henda

Rusty Mirage documents the construction of large sculptures based on the outlines of an imagined city in the Al-Araz desert, Jordan. Henda draws on the Tchokwe peoples’ tradition of sona, geometric designs marked in the sand by storytellers. His sculpture, The Fortress, tells the story of unfinished and derelict areas of cities across the globe. Henda reflects on practices that see buildings left vacant while so many experience homelessness.

Gallery label, October 2023

Let Me Get You a Nice Cup of Tea

2019–20, Yasmin Jahan Nupur

In Let Me Get You a Nice Cup of Tea performance artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur invites gallery visitors to sit and converse with her over a cup of tea. First, an appointment is made. Similar to visiting a friend or neighbour, a time is booked shortly in advance. On arrival the guest sits down and is asked to choose one of several teas prepared by the artist. A conversation ensues at a short distance from other museum visitors. Through the use of domestic furniture, props and a wall painting, Nupur is able to construct an intimate setting within the gallery space.

Institution vs. The Mass

2019, Anna Boghiguian

Institution vs The Mass 2019 is a large-scale multi-part installation that comprises a huge, hand-fabricated chess set and a checkerboard floor of alternating mirrored and black aluminium tiles with a map of the world painted on its surface. As in a true chess set, there are thirty-two pieces in total, sixteen for each opponent. One side of the chess set represents the ‘Institution’ and the other the ‘Masses’, who are protesting against the Institution. The two-dimensional figures are all life-size or bigger, measuring between 175 centimetres and 230 centimetres, and are painted in encaustic on paper, glued to plywood cut-outs. These are hung over the chessboard from metal cables in the ceiling. The composition of the two sets of pieces illustrates how historical systems of control persist in the present and interrogates the ability of social movements to facilitate change. The viewer is immersed in a world created by the artist, oscillating between history and reality on one hand, and the surreal and imaginary on the other.

Our Labyrinth

2015–ongoing, Lee Mingwei

Our Labyrinth is a participatory performance project by Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei in which single dancers, dressed in floor-length sarongs and wearing ankle bells, take it in turns to sweep a mound of rice in patterns on the floor in a designated gallery space. Such forms are described by the artist as ‘a labyrinthine path of their choosing’, a statement which gives the work its title (quoted in ‘Our Labyrinth’ project profile, correspondence with Tate, May 2018).

Armada

2017–2019, Hew Locke

Armada 2019 is an installation made up of forty-five boats of varying sizes made by the artist between 2017 and 2019. The flotilla, which is suspended from the ceiling around shoulder height, includes boats from different periods and places – miniature cargo ships and fishing boats sit alongside caravels and galleons. Locke has described them as votive boats, based on models he had seen in churches and cathedrals in continental Europe, offered by worshippers to give thanks for survival at sea (in Buck 2019, accessed 29 November 2019). Each boat is made from and decorated with a variety of materials. Some of them feature plastic toys, nets and decorations which are mass produced and widely available very cheaply; others incorporate jewels, charms, military badges and replica medals from conflicts involving former colonies. Some are adorned with brass cut-outs featuring Portuguese mercenaries as depicted by sixteenth-century Benin sculptors, along with images of contemporary soldiers. Coins from places like the Caribbean, Gambia and Syria call to mind international trade and the movement of goods, as well as the movement of people and the current global refugee crisis.

Cleaning the Mirror

1995, Marina Abramovic

Cleaning the Mirror 1995 is a sound and video installation by Serbian artist Marina Abramović that features five traditional twenty-five-inch television sets stacked in a column on top of each other, connected to five video cassette recorders, which remain hidden, playing a three-hour video continuously on a loop. The stack of monitors is placed directly on the floor. The work exists in an edition of three plus two artist’s proofs; Tate’s copy is one of the artist’s proofs. Other copies are in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design in Oslo.