Today A Bigger Splash: Painting and Performance opens to the public. This is our first peek at the finished show in all its glory.
Installation view of A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance
Includes Yves Klein IKB 79 1959
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2012 and Niki de Saint Phalle Shooting Picture 1961
© The estate of Niki de Saint Phalle
Photo: Tate Photography
Karen Kilimnik Swan Lake 1992 (installation view)
Courtesy Ringier Collection
© Karen Kilimnik. Photocredit: Tate Photography
Ei Arakawa, Reorienting Orientationalism, New Directions (Haircolour) International Class 2012 (installation view)
© Courtesy the artist and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York; Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles. Photocredit: Tate Photography
Marc Camille Chaimowicz Jean Cocteau… 2003–12 (installation view)
© Courtesy the artist and Cabinet, London. Photocredit: Tate Photography
Installation view of A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance. Photocredit: Tate Photography
A team of art handlers and technicians work with the curators and artists to get work installed in spaces that have often been custom-designed and built for each show, while others across the gallery work on everything from visitor flows in galleries to catalogues, leaflets and caption texts or promotional posters and press stories.
Jackson Pollock Summertime: Number 9A 1948 (installation view)
Tate. Purchased 1988
© Pollock - Krasner Foundation, Inc.
Photo: Tate Photography
Though the exhibition officially opens to the public today, everything has to be ready in advance of that – not least for the private view (where artists, curators, and lenders to the show get their first glimpse of the finished exhibition) and for the press view, which usually happens the day before public opening.
Photographers taking shots of the exhibition for the newspapers at the press view for the exhibition
But now, it’s open, and time to take a short breath before moving on to the work that goes on once a show is up.