A Clearing in the Forest

You are invited to imagine the Tanks as a conceptual ‘clearing in the forest’. Displays are curated along shared themes, foregrounding ideas of environmental knowledge, cyclicality and regeneration. The Tanks are historically generative spaces, having once fuelled the building using oil, itself a natural product originating from the earth. Here, they are presented as the fertile soil on which the museum lies, and from which new growth can emerge.

Some artists explore the idea that time is looped rather than linear. Others adopt feminist approaches to ancestral knowledge and ritual. Although they belong to different generations and places, they collectively point to recurring ideas: the human body as organic, the circular rhythm of time, and notions of renewal, growth and death. Here, in the ‘clearing’, you are invited to participate in this ongoing conversation. After all, it is through rituals that we mark time, commune with our ancestors, and negotiate the various relationships between our bodies and the earth.

The first displays of this group opened on the vernal (spring) equinox. They will grow and develop over the course of the year, resonating with moments in the annual calendar of planting and harvest.