Tate | Young Tate: Exam Help: Empty Spaces

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Empty Spaces

Vacant rooms, ruined buildings, echoing corridors, desolate landscapes. Absences created by people when they leave.

Empty spaces can look clinical, like Lisa Milroy’s Room (1997); or seem menacing like Anselm Kiefer’s Parsifal III (1973). The empty corridors photographed by Catherine Yass and Ilya Kabakov have a mysterious quality. Where do they lead?

The atmospheric effect of light and shadow in an empty space is explored in many of the artworks shown below. While derelict buildings, or buildings under construction, provide lots of opportunities for exploring different shapes and textures.

Desolate landscapes are another theme explored by many artists. Christopher Nevinson’s battleground in A Star Shell (1916) seems sinister in its emptiness. The sense of loneliness created by Salvador Dali’s haunting landscape Mountain Lake (1938) is exaggerated by the disconnected telephone.

Sculptor Rachel Whiteread explores empty space in a very direct way. She makes casts of the negative spaces created by objects. Anthony Gormley similarly looks at negative space in Bed (1980-1), but the imprint is one left by people.

The space left when someone leaves or dies is the subject of Miroslaw Balka’s Dawn sculptures. Using materials such as ash, salt and soap that suggest bodily residue; he addresses themes of absence and loss.