The State We're In 2000–now

Nicole Wermers, The Violet Revs  2016

Partou Zia, 40 Nights and 40 Days  2008

40 Nights and 40 Days 2008 is a large painting in oil on canvas that shows an awkwardly reclining grey figure wearing a simple dress, gazing contemplatively out to her left. Her elbow is supported by a small stack of books, next to a pen and ink pot. The figure is lying on an uneven brown and grey ground beneath a vivid blue sky that dominates the upper half of the composition. A grey arm and hand in a loose red sleeve reaches down from the top edge. The figure is likely to be a self-portrait of the artist Partou Zia. Self-portraits were a particularly important aspect of Zia’s work in expressing her identity as a woman and painter. They also reflected her ongoing interest in the intuitive, spirituality and the development of self-knowledge. The title 40 Nights and 40 Days is a reversal of ‘40 Days and 40 Nights’, referencing multiple biblical stories. These include: forty days and nights of rain sent by God to destroy the earth (Book of Genesis); the period of time Moses was on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments from God (Book of Exodus); and the time Jesus spent fasting alone in the Judaean desert (Gospel of St Matthew). This work was painted in the final year of Zia’s life and was one of her last paintings. The application of oil paint in 40 Nights and 40 Days is more even and opaque than in earlier works by the artist, such as Flowering Rod 2006, also in Tate’s collection (Tate T15994).

Lubaina Himid CBE RA, H.M.S. Calcutta  2021

H.M.S. Calcutta 2021 is an acrylic painting on canvas that depicts two women onboard a ship, looking outwards onto the sea. One woman leans against the railing of the deck; she holds a fan open in a gesture which, according to the artist, means ‘do not betray our secret’. Her travel companion stands by her side. She wears a long green skirt that aids the spatial complexity of the composition: a chair partially appears to rest on the skirt; a small bubble floats nearby; a green form resurfaces in the water – perhaps a continuation of the dress – and suggests a connection with the landforms that surround the voyagers on their journey.

Liz Johnson Artur, Time Don’t Run Here  2020

Time don’t run here forms part of what Artur calls her Black Balloon Archive. She has been making this vast ongoing body of work since the 1990s, depicting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas. Examples from the Archive are displayed here. ‘In my work, I like to talk to people, not about them. When people look at my work, they are actually looking at my audience. It’s them I would like to reach, but everyone else is invited too.’

Gallery label, November 2022

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Razorbill  2020

Razorbill 2020 is a small-scale oil painting of a single female figure with closely cropped hair. Her mouth is open as though caught mid-speech or song. Her upper body is clothed in near black, with a feathered ruffle at the collar. Her right forearm and left elbow rest on a tabletop. The motif of the carnivalesque ruff is one that reappears in Yiadom-Boakye’s work from 2009 onwards, in a number of paintings titled with bird names such as Les Corbeaux 2018, Greenfinch 2012 and Skylark 2010. Razorbill is closely related to these in its tones but is markedly different in its shift towards the looser brushwork and warmer palette that characterises Yiadom-Boakye’s work of 2020.

Adam Farah-Saad, Two traumatised young men connect whilst roaming the city of London, helping each other to survive…(THE INNER CHILDREN MIX)  2023

Rachel Jones, lick your teeth, they so clutch  2021

lick your teeth, they so clutch 2020 is a large-scale landscape-format painting in oil stick on canvas. Like Jones’s earlier paintings, it employs a kaleidoscopic palette and boldness of form typical of her work. Here, fiery reds collide with fleshy pinks and acid yellows against the counterbalancing coolness of blues and greens, contributing to the sense of tension created by the competing forms and the interplay of textures. Jones’s characteristic use of oil sticks as her medium allows her to create an intensity of pigment, layering colour and melding different textural layers that result in a tactile painted surface suggestive of a physical, embodied and intuitive approach to mark-making.

Paul Maheke, Mutual Survival, Lorde’s Manifesto  2015

Mutual Survival, Lorde’s Manifesto 2015 is a two-channel colour video installation presented on two floor-based forty-two-inch LED smart screens displayed leaning against a wall. The work’s title references the American Black feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde (1934–1992) whose words, borrowed and edited together from her essay ‘I am Your Sister’ published in 1985, caption the video intermittently. ‘As a people, we should most certainly work together to end our common oppression,’ the video subtitle begins. ‘We need to join our differences and articulate our particular strengths in the service of our mutual survivals.’ The work lasts seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds and exists in an edition of five. Tate’s copy is number one in the edition.

Mike Nelson, The Asset Strippers (Elephant)  2019

The Asset Strippers (Elephant) 2019 is a large sculptural assemblage made from reclaimed industrial items and materials. It was made as part of Mike Nelson’s larger project The Asset Stripers, his response to the Tate Britain Commission for the Duveen Galleries in 2019. A brilliant blue lathe balances on two wooden timbers on top of a pair of blue trestles. At the top of the lathe sits a dark green anglepoise lamp without a bulb. Positioned alongside at floor level are assorted lathe parts. Three of the parts lie horizontally, two stand upright. Each has been carefully placed in the manner of an archeological artefact or sculptural object, rather than an industrial machine part. The lathe and its component parts are placed on five abutting cast concrete slabs that together resemble a low-level traditional sculptural plinth. The compositional treatment of the parts, together with the monochromatic colour scheme, is reminiscent of British modernist sculpture, in particular the industrial assemblages of Anthony Caro (1924–2013). However, unlike much of Caro’s work, The Asset Strippers (Elephant) has not been painted or surface-treated. The patina of age and use of its reclaimed parts are visible in areas of rusting and traces of oil. Two other assemblages from The Asset Strippers are also in Tate’s collection: The Asset Strippers (Heygate stack, equivalent for a lost estate) 2019 (Tate T15412) and Double Drill (No. 15) 2019 (Tate T15411).