A strange pall has fallen over the Tate Etc. offices in recent weeks. As the days shorten and shadows lengthen, we have become increasingly disturbed by unexplained noises, flashing lights and a regular procession of what can only be described as apparitions, monsters and ghosts. Some might attribute this startling change to overactive imaginations, an excess of caffeine and the curious river and sea mists that occasionally shroud Tate’s four galleries. Others might point instead to Tate’s autumn programme: a phantasmagorical array of artistic activities that wear thin the barrier between daily life and more thrilling realities.
Our cover star is a character from the forthcoming Mike Kelley exhibition at Tate Modern: Ghost and Spirit. The first major retrospective of the legendary American artist in the UK showcases the mischievous and often melancholy spirit that animated his work from the late 1970s to the 2010s. ‘Horror’, as writer Charlie Fox says, ‘is the genre where we go to find out what’s really going on inside: all our gore and trauma and hideousness festively unleashed’.
Hauntings of one kind or another can be found on almost every page. Lucy Ives confronts the ever-growing hoard of data that follows us like a shadow in her essay on Electric Dreams, a mesmerising exhibition coming to Tate Modern this autumn. Elsewhere, we step behind the scenes to see Mire Lee’s visceral sculptures being made for her Hyundai Commission in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall; the artist Allison Katz recreates a disconcertingly familiar childhood photograph; and Richard Wilson’s famous work Cader Idris reflects a particularly terrifying Halloween visitation.
Read on, if you dare,
Tate Etc.
Contents
Mutant Mike
The playful and subversive spirit of Mike Kelley's 'wildly mutating oeuvre' continues to haunt contemporary art, writes Charlie Fox
