Grandfather

2017, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín

Grandfather (Abuelo) 2017 is a woven work incorporating thread and Ikat textile by Antonio Pichilla Quiacain, an artist of Maya-Tz`utujil descent, one of the twenty-one Maya ethnic groups in present-day Guatemala. The background of the piece follows the original colour scheme and the black-on-white abstract pattern found in the indigenous traditional trousers worn by senior Maya-Tz`utujil men in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala, the artist’s birthplace. Laid over this background the artist has stretched thin vertical lines of red and black thread, which are held by needles pressed to the surface. By naming the work with a familial link, the artist honours and celebrates his ancestral heritage which is under constant threat of cultural extinction while at the same time enjoying moments of cultural revival. To some extent, his works of art are themselves also a form of preserving Maya-Tz`utujil culture, within the museological idiom of abstract art. As in many other works by Pichilla, the use of the colour red links to the multiple colours found in the diverse types of maize grown in the Americas – a crop holding sacred value since the classical period of Maya civilisation and protected today by indigenous groups from the multinational monopolised market.

Visceral Canker

1990, Donald Rodney

BLUE PURPLE TILT

2007, Jenny Holzer

Holzer started creating text-based works in the late 1970s. These included hundreds of slogans and common sayings expressing many different points of view. BLUE PURPLE TILT repeats messages from her previous works. Other texts are ‘found’ phrases, borrowed from literary and political sources. Holzer said of her LED displays: ‘A great feature of the signs is their capacity to move, which I love because it’s so much like the spoken word: you can emphasise things; you can roll and pause which is the kinetic equivalent to inflection in the voice.

Gallery label, October 2024

Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three

2015, Haegue Yang

Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, Split in Three 2015 is a large-scale modular installation comprised of over 500 aluminium Venetian blinds. The work directly references Structure with Three Towers 1986 by American artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), one of the leading figures of minimalism and a pioneer of conceptual art. In Yang’s piece, the open-form cubes of LeWitt’s original work have been replaced by horizontally overlaid rows of venetian blinds. As the title indicates, the overall structure has been magnified twenty-three times to scale, divided into three parts and suspended upside down from the ceiling.

Mobile

c.1932, Alexander Calder

By suspending forms that move with the flow of air, Calder revolutionised sculpture. Marcel Duchamp dubbed these works ‘mobiles’. Rather than a solid object of mass and weight, they continually redefine the space around them as they move. Calder’s subtle balance of form and colour resulted in works that suggest an animated version of paintings by friends such as Joan Miró. This very early example was acquired by Julian Trevelyan when he first got to know Calder in the early 1930s.

Gallery label, July 2008

Net-Grid (my dad knows nothing)

2020, Mandy El-Sayegh

Net-Grid (my dad knows nothing) 2020 is a large-scale, unframed painting part of an ongoing series of ‘Net-Grids’ started in 2010. In these paintings El-Sayegh works with silkscreen print directly onto canvas, creating a surface for a layered painting and collage process using found images and text. Overlaying scraps of newsprint from the Financial Times, found objects and silkscreen prints with hand-painted grids, she seeks to examine the pervasive circulation of images and information, as well as the structures that contain them.

Manifestation

2019–20, Oscar Murillo

Manifestation combines oil paint, oil stick, cotton thread and graphite on a composite of canvas, velvet and linen stitched together by hand to form a single overall composition.

Knock Knock

2005, Eva Rothschild

A sculpture that plays on the relationship between abstraction and the figurative, Knock Knock combines many of Rothschild’s formal and thematic concerns. It comprises a floor-standing framework of thin steel rods that measures almost three metres in height. The straight sections of rod are welded to one another in a curving formation. A single rod extends upwards from the lower, branching part of the framework to create a shape that resembles a root or other organic form. The rods are covered in red and black leather strips: the upper part is red and the lower part is mainly black. These strips are tightly woven over the rods of the upper two thirds of the structure, and left loose over the lower third, trailing slightly where they reach the ground. The sculpture seems to be ‘magically floating’ according to the artist (Eva Rothschild in Conversation, Tate Britain, London, 6 October 2009). Its apparent precariousness suggests themes of instability and mutability to which Rothschild’s work often refers.

I Present Your Royal Highness

2018, Jadé Fadojutimi

Each of Fadojutimi's works sits between abstraction and figuration. The artist shifts between gestures and repeated forms to produce her own distinctive visual language. I Present Your Royal Highness is an exploration of the artist's self. Its title is a knowing nod to the role ego plays in individual expression. Fadojutimi's work explores the fluid nature of identity in relation to the world that shapes it. Her dynamic surfaces capture an ever-evolving landscape of emotions. She likens her paintings to a diary of her experience.

Gallery label, May 2021

Mogamma, A Painting in Four Parts: Part 3

2012, Julie Mehretu

The Mogamma is the government building in Tahrir Square in Cairo, which formed a backdrop for the protests against Hosni Mubarak’s regime in early 2011. Mehretu has overlaid architectural drawings of the Mogamma with those of other locations associated with public unrest, including Addis Ababa’s Meskel Squre and New York’s Zuccotti Park, the site of the ‘occupy’ protests. Using digital images and projecting them onto the surface of the canvas, Mehretu complicates the drawn plans so that we can no longer see them clearly. The resulting painting could be seen as a memorial to collective sites of communal resistance.

Gallery label, October 2016

Untitled

2009, Paul Chan

Untitled 2009 is one of a group of three ink drawings on paper in Tate’s collection by Paul Chan that all date from 2009 (Tate T16044, T16045, T16046). They show figures rendered as a tangle of entangled lines and loops of black ink on a white background, their postures passively hunched over. Compared to other drawings on paper that the artist made in the same year in which the characters are articulated in a way that is more figurative or true to life, these works are rendered in a more abstract style, where the extremities (whether they be head, limbs or genitals) are sometimes difficult to discern.

Untitled (Bacchus)

2008, Cy Twombly

In the Summer Camp Tent

2002, Annie Pootoogook

Seated Figure 1

2017, Claudette Johnson MBE

Seated Figure I 2018 is a large drawing in acrylic paint and pastel on white watercolour paper of the head and torso of a young black woman with close-cropped hair; her eyes are downcast, apparently focused on a task in front of her. The figure is set against a geometric background made up of variations of tiled blue rectangles. The only other colour used in the drawing is bright yellow, for the sitter’s undershirt; the sleeves of her cardigan are rendered simply with a few black lines against the white paper. In contrast, the sitter’s skin is rendered tonally using only black pastel. The subject is Beverly Bennett, an artist who has been posing regularly for Johnson since she was introduced to her by the artist Sonia Boyce in 2014. Beverly also appears in the drawing Figure in Raw Umber 2018 (Tate T15261). Seated Figure I was first exhibited in Johnson’s solo exhibition at Hollybush Gardens, London in 2017. In her review for frieze magazine, the writer and artist Sonya Dyer described the drawing as featuring ‘fluid lines that intimate the curves of [the sitter’s] body without sexualization. The sitter never meets our gaze, nor is she particularly bashful; we bear witness to her everyday movements.’ (Dyer 2017, accessed 15 October 2018.)

Untitled (grey and brown)

1991, Fiona Rae

In the early 1990s Fiona Rae started painting big, busy paintings which feature a wide range of colours. Does this picture seem chaotic or messy at first glance? In fact, every element has been carefully considered by the artist. Look closer at the different kinds of marks that Rae has made with the paint. You’ll be able to spot thick brush strokes, dribbled liquid paint, and even patches smeared with a fingertip. You might also see recognisable shapes or images. Rae borrows the techniques and ideas of other artists and combines them with pictures and styles taken from popular culture. For the artist, ‘any one kind of painting language is ... as interesting as another’.

Gallery label, November 2021

In the Zone

1982, Denzil Forrester MBE

This work is part of Forrester’s ongoing nightclub series. It depicts attendees of 1980s Reggae and Dub club nights, located close to the artist’s home in Stoke Newington, East London. Forrester would bring his drawing materials to the nightclub and set them up on a table near the dancefloor. Working on drawings only for the length of a single track, he sought to represent the energy and vitality of the crowd. The artist has spoken about the importance of these club nights in uniting his cultural community, as places that were created for and enjoyed by people of colour. They function as spaces in which cultural expression, fashion, creativity and joy can be explored - without the oppressive gaze of white society-at-large.

Gallery label, June 2022

To a Summer’s Day 2

1980, Bridget Riley

Coloured stripes cross along a common band, reminiscent of twisting ribbons, to create a wave pattern. The choice of colours was intended to provoke an optical mix in the eye, with as much interaction as possible between colours. Light blue and yellow ochre form the basic pair of colours into which occasional threads of rose and violet are introduced to accentuate the warm and cold accents across the canvas. The title refers to William Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

Gallery label, October 2016

From Line

1978, Lee Ufan

This work belongs to a series that Lee made by tracing long lines until he used up the paint on the brush. He laid the canvas horizontally and carefully controlled his breathing during each of these slow markmaking gestures. Describing his method, Lee wrote: ‘Load the brush and draw a line. At the beginning it will appear dark and thick, then it will get gradually thinner and finally disappear ... A line must have a beginning and an end. Space appears within the passage of time, and when the process of creating space comes to an end, time also vanishes.’

Gallery label, February 2024

Line Describing a Cone

1973, Anthony McCall

Line Describing a Cone is made from a beam of white light emitted from a film projector positioned at one end of a darkened room. Passing through the projector is an animated film of a thin, arcing line that, frame by frame, gradually joins up to become a complete circle. Over the course of thirty minutes this line of light traces the circumference of the circle as a projection on the far wall while the beam takes the form of a three-dimensional hollow cone. Mist from smoke machines gives the beam of light a greater density, making it appear almost tangible.

Crivelli’s Room II

1967, Gillian Ayres CBE RA

Poem of Nine Verses

1966–8, Saloua Raouda Choucair

In the early 1960s, Choucair began creating what she called ‘sculptural poems’ using interlocking forms that can be rearranged in various formations. Poem of Nine Verses is influenced by Sufi poetry, Islamic and modernist architecture, and geometric abstraction. Each aluminium piece can stand alone, like a verse in a poem, but also forms a unified structure. In creating this work, the artist ‘wanted rhythm like the poetic meter, to be at once more independent and interlinked, and to have lines like meanings.’

Gallery label, March 2025

Morning

1965, Agnes Martin

Describing Morning, Martin said: ‘I had to leave out a lot of things that one expects to see in a painting... I was painting about happiness and bliss and they are very simple states of mind I guess. Morning is a wonderful dawn, soft and fresh.’ She began making delicate hand-drawn grids in 1960. Here the grid is made from dark graphite and subtle red pencil lines, on a painted background. By doing this, Martin blurred the boundaries between painting and drawing.

Gallery label, February 2020

Hyena Stomp

1962, Frank Stella

The title Hyena Stomp comes from a track by the American jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. Stella was thinking about syncopation while working on the painting.

Gallery label, September 2004

Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red

1937–42, Piet Mondrian

Mondrian’s interest lay in the abstract quality of line but by 1914 he had all but eliminated the curved line from his work. By 1916 he had suppressed any sense of a subject. Still later he developed a new form of rigorous abstraction called Neo-Plasticism in which he limited himself to straight, horizontal and vertical lines and basic primary colours. Typically his compositions were not symmetrical but could scarcely be purer in their elements. He felt this art reflected a greater, universal truth beyond everyday appearance.

Gallery label, April 2013

Quarante Huit Quai d’Auteuil

1935, Winifred Nicholson

The title of this work refers to Winifred Nicholson’s address in Paris, where she lived from 1932 to 1938, befriending artists such as Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp and Jean Hélion. Nicholson painted her first abstract paintings in 1934, exhibiting them under the name Winifred Dacre. The paintings are expressions of colour and light, and she wrote that ‘the nature of abstract colour is utter purity – but colours wish to fly, to merge, to change each other by their juxtapositions, to radiate, to shine, to withdraw deep within themselves.’

Gallery label, November 2015

Head of a Catalan Peasant

1925, Joan Miró

Miró claimed that his paintings of the mid-1920s came to him ‘almost entirely from hallucination’. This image, however, was copied from a small preparatory drawing. A grid-like structure is faintly visible. Miró used it to help him enlarge his initial drawing. Miró was from Catalonia, an autonomous community in Spain. The red form in this painting references the barretina hat. This symbol of Catalan identity suggests Miró’s support for Catalan nationalism. Other parts of the painting are more ambiguous. The circles have been read as both eyes and breasts. The wisps of hair below could suggest a beard or pubic hair.

Gallery label, August 2019