Three Tables is a long interactive work by artist Tim Etchells. Three performers seated in the open space of Tate Exchange draw members of the public into conversations and exchanges on topics that range from work and money to ephemeral things and friendship, family, and love. It’s a simple but complicated piece, presented this time by performers Season Butler, Deborah Pearson and Souheil Sleiman (who steps into the shoes of Harun Morrison).
We first presented Three Tables last year, as part of the opening of Tate Exchange and it worked really well – a low key format that ebbed and flowed to create some really intense conversations and encounters between strangers. The piece depends on the performers of course, who are really adept and open in their approach, but it’s also very reliant on and open to visitors to the gallery taking up the invitation of the piece to conversation and discussion. – Tim Etchells
In the same time period we are also re-presenting Tim’s piece Further Provocations, manifested by Andrew Stevenson, in which a series of texts are repeatedly painted, painted out and then repainted on the longest wall in the Exchange space.