Tate Britain’s autumn season of BP Spotlights is announced today. The BP Spotlights include Tate collection works and loans that explore a particular theme or focus on the work of one artist or group of artists.
Autumn highlights include three-dimensional photographs from the collection of Dr. Brian May shown beside their Pre-Raphaelite counterparts; a selection of works by William Hogarth to mark the 250th anniversary of his death; and a display of paintings, reliefs and sculptures by one of Britain’s most important Constructivist artists, Marlow Moss. There will also be rooms devoted to the primitive and carnivalesque work of Caroline Achaintre and to two series of work entitled Belgravia and Gentlemen by photographer Karen Knorr.
‘Poor man’s picture gallery’: Victorian Art and Stereoscopic Photography
Monday 13 October 2014 – Sunday 1 November 2015
A Poor Mans Picture Gallery is the first display in a major British art gallery devoted to the nineteenth century craze of three-dimensional photography. A number of Tate’s famous Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite works will be shown, such as Wallis’ Chatteron and Frith’s Derby Day alongside a rare collection of their three-dimensional photographic doubles all of which have been kindly loaned to Tate by Dr. Brian May (b.1947).
William Hogarth
Monday 27 October 2014 – Sunday 26 April 2015
Marking the 250th anniversary of William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) death, this display presents the artist as a pre-eminent figure in the canon of British art. Uniting his paintings, chalk drawings and prints, the display will examine the acquisition history of the pieces and the relationship between Tate and works by Hogarth in the collection.
Karen Knorr
Monday 13 October 2014 – Sunday 4 October 2015
This display brings together two series of work by the photographer Karen Knorr (born 1954): Belgravia 1979–81 and Gentlemen 1981–83, which form part of the Eric and Louise Franck London Collection. The series explore the relationship between image and text, patriarchal values of the upper middle classes and the aspirations and lifestyles of the privileged minority.
Caroline Achaintre
Monday 13 October 2014 – Sunday 3 May 2015
The work of Caroline Achaintre (born 1969) encompasses a diverse range of media including textiles, ceramics, woodcuts and watercolours evoking the primitive and the carnivalesque. At times menacing, sexual and playful they allude to early moments in modernism such as German Expressionism, while at the same time presenting contradictions between art and design, fashion and taste, abstraction and figuration.
William Hazlitt: Through the Eyes of a Critic
Monday 29 September 2014 – Sunday 5 April 2015
This display looks at works by artists including Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner through the eyes of the man Kenneth Clark deemed ‘the best critic before Ruskin’, William Hazlitt (1778–1830). Hazlitt first trained as a painter and went on to become one of the premiere essayists of his day, valuing gusto (power, passion) and fidelity to nature above all. His discussion of works now in the Tate collection forms the focus of this display.
New Brutalist Image 1949-1955
Monday 24 November 2014 – Sunday 4 October 2015
The sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005), photographer Nigel Henderson (1917–1985) and architects Alison and Peter Smithson (1928–93; 1923–2003) collaborated on three separate projects at the same time: Hunstanton School in Norfolk, an office for engineer Ronald Jenkins, and the exhibition ‘Parallel of Life and Art’. With a rich array of unseen material, this display will explore how these apparently diverse projects all fell under the label ‘New Brutalism’.
Marlow Moss
Monday 29 September 2014 – Sunday 22 March 2015
Marlow Moss (1889–1958), once overlooked, is now regarded as an important British Constructivist artist. Drawn from British and European collections, this display includes a rare 1930s work recently acquired by Tate and examines how her paintings, reliefs and sculptures interrogate movement, space and light. Her works are highly abstract and are often compared to those by Mondrian to whom she was close.
Spaces of Black Modernism: London 1919-1939
Monday 13 October 2014 – Sunday 4 October 2015
In the inter-war period, the studios, art colleges and social clubs of Chelsea, Bloomsbury and Soho became places of multi-ethnic exchange – bringing together icons such as sculptor Ronald Moody, (1900–84), jazz singer Elisabeth Welch (1908–2003) and writer Nancy Cunard (1896–1965). The display includes paintings, sculpture, photographs and archival material. Spaces of Black Modernism explores how cosmopolitan networks of artists, activists, writers and artists’ models helped shape the cultural and political identity of the city.
David Hall: TV Interruptions
Monday 13 October 2014 – Sunday 29 March 2015
David Hall (born 1937) is a pioneer of video art in Britain. His TV Interruptions is an installation consisting of seven video works initially conceived as short interventions broadcast unannounced on television as part of the Edinburgh Festival in 1971. The videos involve various actions, ranging from a burning television set to a running household tap. In the installation, the works are shown alongside each other on seven randomly clustered monitors. Viewing is interrupted as sound and image merge and conflict, evoking a similar experience to when the videos were originally shown on television
Reception, Rupture and Return: The Model and the Life Room
Continues until Sunday 19 April 2015
Reception, Rupture and Return: The Model and the Life Room examines the role of the life model for the artist and the changing status of life drawing from the 19th to the 21st centuries. The display includes unique perspectives of three artists’ models from the Tate archive. It will explore themes such as the model as a person, as a political vehicle, as a challenger to convention, and the rethinking of the model during the inter-war and post-war periods.