TATE MODERN AND TOTALLY UNCOOL ILLNESSES

So I just missed my essay feedback session with Pat Simpson. Sorry about that Pat. 
I have a valid excuse though; I planned to travel home on Monday morning and be there in time, but in the night I  was set upon by a particularly nasty stomach bug, and spent the next 24 hours alternating between lying on the couch feeling like utter shite and carrying out tactical chunders. 


I'm fine now though, thanks for asking.


But now, ladies and gentlemen, let me take you on a journey through time and space - to the weekend just past. I went to Tate Modern, to try and see the Richter exhibition; sadly it had packed up and buggered off a few days before I got there. BUT - I did manage to see the new Unilever show in the turbine hall - Tacita Dean's rather imaginatively titled "FILM".


"FILM" is a description as well as a title; for the piece is 11 minutes of video, all captured on Kodak colour film, edited and cut by Dean herself. The first thing I noticed was that the turbine hall of the Tate, normally flooded with light from its iconic windows, has all its windows blacked out. Initially, this makes the Hall into a dark and somewhat menacing space. 

When you pass the screen that separates the piece from the rest of the space - the Hall is lit up by this giant projection, on a screen that must be at least 50 feet in height. The scale of the projection itself is impressive, but the work is also clever in its own subtle way. Dean has used old fashioned techniques to edit the film, delicately layering different sequences and tinting the film different colours to give it an otherworldly feel. While I was watching the piece, some parents with small children arrived. The children began running around hyperactively back and forth in front of the screen, in that way that siblings chase each other round the playground. For some, this may have been distracting, but to me, the shadows and silhouettes that they cast were quite fascinating.

 Though it did not exactly move me to tears, I still kinda enjoyed this work. Photographs do not do this piece justice, it needs to be seen in the flesh. Definitely recommend it.


- Padfoot