Migrations @ Tate Britain

Migrations @ Tate Britain

I was drawn to this exhibition because it fits perfectly with my exploration of migration, immigration - yearning to breathe free.

'Migrations', explores how migration into Britain has shaped the course of art in Britain of the last 500 years; from 16th century Flemish portrait painters to moving image works from the early years of this century.

The most interesting thing to me about the first 3 rooms (16th-19th century) was how much immigrant painters were accepted, encouraged and respected by the authorities (at that time the royal court).  In a time before strict border controls, visas and other assorted hoops to be jumped through it was possible for a struggling artist to find their way to Britain and develop their craft.  Now with strict border controls on any non-European people, it is almost impossible for new young artists to find their way to Britain and establish themselves developing their practice.  The only people who are given visa's are those artists with already established international reputation and sponsorship in the UK.  The work itself in this section of the exhibition was of course accomplished and brilliant but nowhere near as interesting as the art in later rooms.

Jewish Artists, Jewish Art and refugees from Nazi Europe: this was the first room where you started  to see a clear identity emerging from the paintings.  Jewish artists in the early part of the 20th Century started to paint and depict Jewish people and Jewish family life, something normally hidden from view. There was a huge diversity of art in this room with Jewish artists contributing to the emerging modernism; there were two beautiful plastic sculptures by Naum Gabo, balanced, complex forms rendered simple through the use of transparent material. 

It was in 1905 that the Aliens Act was enacted restricting Jewish and other immigration.  Though it wasn't discussed in the exhibition I know that the Jewish community played an important role in the emerging anti-fascist movement; they were clearly enmeshed and played a part in shaping British art as well.  This made me wonder at the lack of Irish art, I realised how few Irish artists I could name (apart from Francis Bacon who though born in Ireland, was practically English).  I know that Irish immigrants have played a pivotal role in British life from worker rights movements to anti fascist movements to Troops Out movements - why isn't this reflected in visual art or is it that Irish artists are overlooked in the art world? Something for me to research further and I will return to it in this blog.

The dematerialised object: this was a wonderful collection of pieces, from David Medalla's bubble machine sculpture (Cloud Canyons) to the video of Gustav Metzingers 'auto destructive' art.  There was a video recreation of an original performance by Metzinger where he stretched nylon on an enormous scaffold opposite St Paul's (interestingly, now the location of Tate Modern).  He proceeded to spray acid onto the fabric, slowly destroying it and revealing St Paul's. I loved the interactive, playful, experimental processes of the artists in this room.  Rasheed Araeens small 'lovers' sculpture was, similar to Gabos work, beautiful simplicity. 

The Lovers

The Lovers is a work that was originally intended to provoke direct interaction by the viewer, asking them to reconfigure the two parts of the sculpture how they wished.  It was an enormous shame that there was a clear "Due to the extreme fragility of the work the viewer is not permitted to move pieces here" sign.  For me that was very sad, how much better the work would have been if we could manipulate it, feel it, take part in it; I wonder why no one has ever thought of simply reconstructing the piece, keeping the original in some mausoleum of storage so its 'preciousness' can be guarded and allowing the viewers to actually experience the work as was intended.  If I sound annoyed, it's because I am.

For me, the stand out work in this exhibition was the video pieces, I took this quote form the exhibition wall:

"If migration, virtual or physical, temporary or ongoing, is increasingly a condition of contemporary life, the moving image is an apt medium for expressing this condition.  It captures motion and is itself endlessly transportable.  It can inhabit multiple forms at any scale or size while its temporal nature allows a picture to develop over time.  As an artwork, it exists only temporarily in the act of projection." 

This made me think about the 'endlessly transportable' sculptural projection screen I'm planning for my final piece and how happy I am to be working with film which I think exactly captures my theme.

I spent about 3 hours in this exhibition, a large part (almost an hour) was spent rapt in the Black Audio Film Collectives 'Harmondsworth Songs' (1986); A pioneering film essay in the aftermath of the riots in London, Liverpool and Birmingham in the 1980's. Sparked by police brutality & racism, the riots were germinated in the racism, cuts and attacks on the working class of the Thatcher era.  I was rapt by this film which weaved together media footage with real voices of the black and Asian communities (though at that time because there was such a strong anti-racist movement there was no such differentiation in the words black & Asian - black was a political term, defined as those non white people who faced racism).  I laughed out loud when one young Asian man stated how the government was willing to spend millions on bidding for the Olympics yet couldn't meet peoples basic needs for employment, education, heath and housing - sound familiar?  You could take directly some of the things being said then and play them in the wake of the recent riots and they would stand true.

Mona Hatoum's 'Measures of Distance' was a moving and powerful piece that combined pictures and text, recordings of conversations with her mother in Palestine with her reading her mothers letters aloud. Mona Hatoum is a Beirut born Palestinian exiled in the UK while her mother remains in Lebanon (where the family escaped to).  This piece was layers, upon, layers upon layers; fragmentation, sorrow and power - it engraved the pain of being exiled, the ache of distance and not knowing where you really belong.

Francis Aylis' 'Railings' (2004) is worth a mention for its simplicity and effectiveness.  Simply walking around various residential squares in London dragging a stick along the railings he created hypnotic increasingly complex sounds.  There was a group of teenagers on a school trip to the gallery who decided to add to the work with their clapping and stamping joyfully adding to the sound.

How Floating Coffins was presented

The final work I'll talk about and what I think was the best thing in this exhibition was a video piece by Zineb Sedira 'Floating coffins' (2009).  Shot in the harbour city of Nouadhibou, West Africa; home to the worlds largest ship graveyard as well as the departure point for West African immigrants hoping to reach the Canary Islands.  Presented on multiple different sized screens, placed from high up to low down with round balls (buoy's?) suspended from the ceiling on rope concealing multiple speakers; this work was as much about the presentation as the video.  From the start you are immersed in sound and visuals, the pictures moving across the screens, sometimes zoomed in on rusty hulls or the sea, at other times presenting a wide view of this haunting location.  Sometimes several images came together to form a bigger picture; my eye was constantly moving, never still , never fixed.

I recently saw a documentary on Hockney and his photography, he talked about his photo collages as forcing the viewer to look as they would normally look on a complex scene - our eyes do not stay fixed, we take in many things at once, looking at detail then the overall scene, then something else.... He felt that traditional photography forced the eye to do something it would not normally do, view something from one static viewpoint.  I was reminded of this with Sedira's work which never allowed my eye to stay still, it was sometimes frustrating because I thought I wanted to zoom in and take in the detail of just one of the beautiful shots, but actually isn't this frustration, constant movement, changing perspective's also part of the experience of migration?  This was a magical work that sent shivers down my spine; all at once beautiful, eerie, sad and full of colour, light and movement.

I'll finish with a quote not from this exhibition but from Don McCullin, whose photographs are on display at Tate Britain:

"Photography isn't looking, its feeling.  If you cant feel what you're looking at then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures"

 Wise words for an artist to live by, whatever the medium.

Postscript:  I did pop in to the Picasso exhibition which was an interesting from an art history perspective but couldn't hold a candle to Migrations for sheer power and impact.  I was disappointed but not surprised that Picasso was packed to the rafters whilst Migrations was virtually empty (nice for me though as I relished being able to leisurely take my time through the exhibition and sit for as long as I liked in front of the video works).