Press Office: Press Releases
Level 2 Gallery: Stutter
Thursday 23 April – Sunday 16 August 2009
Admission
Opening hours: Sunday to Thursday, 10.00–18.00. Friday and Saturday, 10.00–22.00. Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15).
Public information number: 020 7887 8888.
Public information URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/stutter/default.shtm
Press release: 2 April 2009
Stutter, the latest exhibition in Tate Modern’s Level 2 programme, explores the themes of disruption and discontinuity within processes of thought and language. The group show features
works by international contemporary artists Sven Augustijnen, Anna Barham, Dominique Petitgand, Michael Riedel, Will Stuart
and Michelangelo Pistoletto and includes a wide range of media, ranging from sculpture, work on paper and video, to performance and
sound. The exhibition’s title, Stutter, comes from the onomatopoetic word for an interrupted act of speech.
Level 2 is Tate Modern’s space for emerging artists, dedicated to experiment and the latest ideas, themes and trends in international
contemporary art.
Sven Augustijnen’s films Johan and Francois 2001 are intimate portraits of people suffering from aphasia, the loss of the ability to produce or comprehend language.
Augustijnen's skillfully edited documentaries gradually reveal the thoughts and memories of the patients and allow the viewer
to access a world that is shaped by the experience of fragmentation and degradation.
The centrepiece of Anna Barham’s contribution to Stutter is a sculpture comprised of fluorescent tubes, orchestrated by computer codes. Creating an infinite number of flickering
pulses, A Splintered Game 2008 manipulates ideas of geometry, structures and combinations as a way to illustrate and reveal thought processes. The
installation is surrounded by seven of Barham's drawings that show her interest in the potential of words and anagrams to
create elaborate forms and to trigger images and narratives in the viewer’s imagination.
In a new spatial configuration, Dominique Petitgand presents Someone on the ground 2005-2006, where recordings of words, pauses, breaths and noise merge into layers of voice and sound, structured by break
ups and cuts. Played back from various spaces in the gallery, this installation takes place alongside and simultaneous to
other works in the exhibition, overarching and setting them in relation, creating tensions between speech and noise, figuration
and abstraction.
Will Stuart (Will Holder and Stuart Bailey) present one of Michelangelo Pistoletto's Minus Objects from 1966, Structure for talking while standing. They challenge Pistoletto’s artwork through accompanying texts, exploring the use and significance of Pistoletto’s piece
within the context of both the exhibition and Will Stuart’s intervention.
Michael Riedel presents an entirely new work, which arises out of an array of gaps, elisions and errors. These result from
a complex process of editing video footage of film screenings, recorded over a period of many months, into a frenetic trailer
lasting just eight minutes.
The exhibition is curated by Nicholas Cullinan and Vanessa Desclaux.
For further information contact Oliver Krug, Tate Press Office, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG Call 020 7887 8730
Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk