Sixty Years: The Unfinished Conversation

Sunil Gupta, Bruno & Daniel, London  1984, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Helen Marten, The Age in Which We Love (Bulging the House)  2021

The Age in Which We Love (Bulging the House) 2021 is a two-part work that comprises a large-scale painting and a sculpture that is placed on the floor directly in front of it. The painting, which measures three by almost two and a half metres, is composed of a series of screenprinted and hand-painted elements that were produced separately and then joined together using a series of metal ‘dividers’, which follow the linear printed elements of the work. The seven separate panels (each of different dimensions) that make up the work are screenprints on different materials – synthetic leather, suede, brocade, leatherette, printed cotton and crushed velvet – the textures of which remain visible to the viewer.

Rita Donagh, Long Meadow  1982

The conflict in the north of Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s saw violent acts by both Unionists and Republicans perpetrated in mainland Britain and Northern Ireland. One of the key sites during those times was the Maze Prison in County Antrim, formerly known as Long Kesh or ‘Long Meadow’, the title of Donagh’s painting. Paramilitary prisoners were housed in the eight prison ‘H Blocks’, projected by Donagh in perspective onto a square canvas, echoing the square plan of a single cell block. The aerial view and the subtle rendering of the light convey the feeling of an air raid.

Gallery label, September 2016

Sutapa Biswas, Kali  1983–1985

Kali documents a performance Biswas staged with Isabella Tracy. The artists play themselves and the characters Kali and Ravan from Hindu mythology. The film opens with an introduction from Biswas explaining that the characters of the performance enact a mythic struggle of good over evil. Kali represents a challenge to forces of ‘imperialism, cultural domination and exploitation of the East by the West’. As part of the performance, art historian Griselda Pollock sits on a chair wearing a hood. As a student, Biswas challenged Pollock for not engaging meaningfully with issues of race and colonialism while making space for discussion of gender and class. This exchange led Pollock to radically revise the Leeds University art history syllabus. Biswas notes, ‘I arrived and said: “You’ve got to change the course.” I was lucky because she listened’.

Gallery label, November 2023

Jacqui Poncelet, Clay, bronze, wood and fabric  1988

This installation features both rigid and malleable materials. The objects sitting atop the fabric suggest soft flesh and intimate body parts, giving the work a sensual quality. Jacqui Poncelet’s sculptures from the 1980s were informed by her encounter with ninth-century Indian erotic stone sculptures at the British Museum. The floral pattern evokes the textiles often found in traditional English interiors. Yet, as Poncelet observes, ‘You know the way the English are such pirates. It is a Persian pattern that’s literally been adapted in an English manner’.

Gallery label, October 2025

Mohammed Sami, Refugee Camp  2022

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Razorbill  2020

Razorbill 2020 is a small-scale oil painting of a single female figure with closely cropped hair. Her mouth is open as though caught mid-speech or song. Her upper body is clothed in near black, with a feathered ruffle at the collar. Her right forearm and left elbow rest on a tabletop. The motif of the carnivalesque ruff is one that reappears in Yiadom-Boakye’s work from 2009 onwards, in a number of paintings titled with bird names such as Les Corbeaux 2018, Greenfinch 2012 and Skylark 2010. Razorbill is closely related to these in its tones but is markedly different in its shift towards the looser brushwork and warmer palette that characterises Yiadom-Boakye’s work of 2020.

Alberta Whittle, Icon for summoning memory  2022

Alberta Whittle layers raffia palm tree fibres, wool, beads, shells and patches of her grandmother’s fabrics into a richly symbolic composition. A raffia-clad figure, the ‘icon’ of the work’s title, embodies the joyous resistance of carnival. This figure represents an ancestor guiding us toward enlightenment. Their clothing recalls the Shaggy Bear, a character that performs with the Tuk bands at Bajan carnival celebrations. Snakes, philodendron leaves, doilies and diamonds symbolise escape, fertility, women’s labour and divine structures.

Gallery label, December 2025

Paul Maheke, Mutual Survival, Lorde’s Manifesto  2015

Mutual Survival, Lorde’s Manifesto 2015 is a two-channel colour video installation presented on two floor-based forty-two-inch LED smart screens displayed leaning against a wall. The work’s title references the American Black feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde (1934–1992) whose words, borrowed and edited together from her essay ‘I am Your Sister’ published in 1985, caption the video intermittently. ‘As a people, we should most certainly work together to end our common oppression,’ the video subtitle begins. ‘We need to join our differences and articulate our particular strengths in the service of our mutual survivals.’ The work lasts seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds and exists in an edition of five. Tate’s copy is number one in the edition.

Tish Murtha, Alleyway, Kenilworth Road from the series ‘Juvenile Jazz Bands’  1979

This black and white photograph is from Tish Murtha’s series Juvenile Jazz Bands 1979. Murtha studied documentary photography in Newport, Wales, where she was taught by photographer David Hurn (born 1934), a member of the international photography cooperative Magnum Photos. She returned to the Newcastle area in 1978, capturing the impact of deindustrialisation, as well as the social and economic disadvantages of those living in her area, disadvantages which she had also experienced.

Partou Zia, 40 Nights and 40 Days  2008

40 Nights and 40 Days 2008 is a large painting in oil on canvas that shows an awkwardly reclining grey figure wearing a simple dress, gazing contemplatively out to her left. Her elbow is supported by a small stack of books, next to a pen and ink pot. The figure is lying on an uneven brown and grey ground beneath a vivid blue sky that dominates the upper half of the composition. A grey arm and hand in a loose red sleeve reaches down from the top edge. The figure is likely to be a self-portrait of the artist Partou Zia. Self-portraits were a particularly important aspect of Zia’s work in expressing her identity as a woman and painter. They also reflected her ongoing interest in the intuitive, spirituality and the development of self-knowledge. The title 40 Nights and 40 Days is a reversal of ‘40 Days and 40 Nights’, referencing multiple biblical stories. These include: forty days and nights of rain sent by God to destroy the earth (Book of Genesis); the period of time Moses was on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments from God (Book of Exodus); and the time Jesus spent fasting alone in the Judaean desert (Gospel of St Matthew). This work was painted in the final year of Zia’s life and was one of her last paintings. The application of oil paint in 40 Nights and 40 Days is more even and opaque than in earlier works by the artist, such as Flowering Rod 2006, also in Tate’s collection (Tate T15994).

Rita Keegan, Homage to Frida Kahlo  1987

In this self-portrait, Rita Keegan stares out at the viewer. Her direct gaze recalls the self-portraits of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Cracks appear throughout her face, neck and chest. Portraiture and self-portraiture feature regularly in Keegan’s practice and are often references to her family photographs. Her extensive archive documents her Black middle-class Canadian family from the 1890s to the present day. Keegan moved to London in 1980 from the US and, in 1982, co-founded Brixton Art Gallery. She has spent her career working to support artists of colour.

Gallery label, January 2025

Denzil Forrester MBE, Three Wicked Men  1982

John Stezaker, Untitled  1989

Untitled is a collage combining three separate images. The principal image is a colour photograph of a film actress taken in the 1940s or 1950s. Her face has been excised by the silhouetted figure of another woman cut out of the paper on which the portrait was printed. The space of the silhouette is filled with a photographic reproduction of a moth on a branch. As is usual in a portrait, the photographed actress looks at the viewer but as a result of the artist’s intervention only her cheek, a few eyelashes and a sliver of eyebrow are visible on her right side and her jaw and ear on her left. Her right shoulder and part of her forearm are raised – she appears to be leaning on something. Stezaker’s collage obscures all the parts of her normally needed to read a portrait and in this sense the silhouetted figure operates like a mask – a concept central to Stezaker’s work (see Masks XI, XIII and XIV, 2005-6, T12345-7). The artist derived the image of the moth from an early colour photogravure, printed in a volume of The Natural World (a pre-war publication Stezaker found in a second hand book shop). The colours of its unusual markings – a delicate pink, white and two shades of brown – echo what we can see of the film actress’s skin tones, dark brown hair and white blouse or dress. The moth’s patterning covers most of the actress’s face with the uncanny effect of evoking a strange disfigurement. The artist has commented that the image reminds him ‘of that combination of the insectile and Victorian interiors in A.S.Byatt’s Morpho Eugenia (a short story printed in Angels and Insects, London 1992)’ (letter to the author 27 October 2007).

John Stezaker, Third Person  1988–9

Third Person is a collage combining three separate images. The principal image is a colour photograph of a film actor from the 1940s or 1950s. The silhouetted figure of another man has been cut out of this portrait, eliminating most of the actor’s face and chest, and the space has been filled with a reproduction of a painting of Queen Victoria. The outline of the second man cuts across the actor’s forehead and the corner of his right eye which looks out of the image at the viewer. His right hand, raised close to his face, is bisected by the collaged addition; it holds a cigarette that emerges from the point where the actor’s fingers meet the hand of Queen Victoria, lying on her ermine robes. The outline of the silhouetted male figure cuts off her head at the neck; the line of her necklace extends the line of the smoking actor’s right eyebrow. The silhouetted figure’s head is half filled with the image of a rich blue sky in which clouds are warmly illuminated in orange shades that complement the queen’s skin tones and the flesh tones of the smoking actor. The blue sky echoes highlights of blue light in the smoking actor’s black hair and on his dark jacket. These complimentary colours – shades of orange and electric blue – are repeated in the out of focus orange and blue patterning on the wall behind the actor.

Tish Murtha, Judging Binchester from the series ‘Juvenile Jazz Bands’  1979

This black and white photograph is from Tish Murtha’s series Juvenile Jazz Bands 1979. Murtha studied documentary photography in Newport, Wales, where she was taught by photographer David Hurn (born 1934), a member of the international photography cooperative Magnum Photos. She returned to the Newcastle area in 1978, capturing the impact of deindustrialisation, as well as the social and economic disadvantages of those living in her area, disadvantages which she had also experienced.

Tish Murtha, Noble Street from the series ‘Juvenile Jazz Bands’  1979

This black and white photograph is from Tish Murtha’s series Juvenile Jazz Bands 1979. Murtha studied documentary photography in Newport, Wales, where she was taught by photographer David Hurn (born 1934), a member of the international photography cooperative Magnum Photos. She returned to the Newcastle area in 1978, capturing the impact of deindustrialisation, as well as the social and economic disadvantages of those living in her area, disadvantages which she had also experienced.

Tish Murtha, SuperMac from the series ‘Elswick Kids’  1978

This black and white photograph is from Tish Murtha’s series Elswick Kids 1978. Murtha studied documentary photography in Newport, Wales, where she was taught by photographer David Hurn (born 1934), a member of the international photography cooperative Magnum Photos. She returned to the Newcastle area in 1978, capturing the impact of deindustrialisation, as well as the social and economic disadvantages of those living in her area, disadvantages which she had also experienced.

Sunil Gupta, Karl & Daniel, London  1985, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Richard Wentworth, 35°9,32°18  1985

Richard Wentworth had initially retrieved this ladder from a scrap heap, having been drawn to its sculptural quality. Behind it, a more fragile cable ladder emerges like a ghostly presence. The title is a map reference. Wentworth explained that it emerged from a conversation with a former Philosophy student, whom he had asked if it were possible to locate the ladder that connects heaven and earth, as described in Jacob’s dream in the Bible (Genesis 28,10). The student replied, ‘Oh yes’, and presented Wentworth with a grid reference the following morning.

Gallery label, November 2025

Leon Kossoff, Booking Hall, Kilburn Underground  1987

Kossoff’s principal subjects are his family and friends, and the parts of London best knownto him, and he reflected that, when painting public scenes, portraits of people close to him begin to appear within the crowd. This large painting belongs to a series depicting Kilburn Underground station in north London. Kossoff stated that ‘the shuddering feet of the sprawling city linger in my mind like a faintly glimmering memory of a long forgotten, perhaps never experienced childhood which, if rediscovered and illuminated, would ameliorate the pain of the present.’

Gallery label, September 2016

Bill Woodrow, English Heritage - Humpty Fucking Dumpty  1987

Wedged between the sections of a vaulting box are representations of a wheeled plough, a book, a clocking-in machine and a box with radiation hazard markings. This succession of objects symbolises human progress, creating what Woodrow calls 'a section through history'. At the top of the precarious structure sits the figure of Humpty Dumpty who, according to the nursery rhyme, 'sat on a wall' and 'had a great fall'. The ironic title English Heritage reflects Woodrow''s discomfort with the amount of jingoism in Britain during the 1980s, as well as a desire to question what actually constitutes his own heritage.

Gallery label, August 2004

Sunil Gupta, Ian & Pavlik, London  1984, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Johnathan & Kim, London  1985, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Guy & Brian, London  1984, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Emmanuel & David, London  1984, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Andrew & John, London  1985, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Dylan & Gerald, London  1985, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Roger & Steve, London  1984, printed 2018

This series of black and white portraits features gay and lesbian couples from Sunil Gupta’s social circles in London and Newcastle. Called Lovers: Ten Years On, the project was shot over a period of two years from 1984–6, following the end of Gupta’s own ten-year relationship. Reminiscent of traditional family portraits, the photographs show couples in affectionate poses in their own living spaces. Prejudicial coverage of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the 1980s threatened to turn public opinion against the acceptance of queer relationships, which were portrayed as ‘sexually deviant’. In contrast to these offensive depictions of queer love, the people in Lovers: Ten Years On are often presented as quite ordinary, middle-class, professional couples. Many of the people photographed would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sunil Gupta, Lisa & Emily, London  1984, printed 2018

This is one of a group of photographs in Tate’s collection from Sunil Gupta’s Lovers: Ten Years On, a series of over thirty black and white portraits of gay couples taken in the United Kingdom between 1984 and 1986 (Tate P82123–P82137 and Ian and Julian P13784). With the exception of Martin & Gary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1984 (Tate P82123), they were all taken in London. Lovers: Ten Years On was made after Gupta’s own ten-year relationship ended and, as a form of social analysis, he decided to document the long-term gay relationships he encountered and the changing sensibilities of the social environment he found himself a part of. Most of the subjects are from his own social milieu at the time, professional couples resident in the Greater London area. Taken over a period of two years, the black and white portraits all follow the same format – they are shot in domestic interiors, the poses and arrangements reminiscent of traditional family photographs. The subjects are centred in the frame and look directly into the camera. Most of the couples are shown in affectionate poses and embraces within their domestic settings; some included their pets in the picture, others chose to be depicted in front of works of art in their living rooms, surrounded by books, or in their kitchens.The series was accompanied by an artist’s statement, in which Gupta observed that while there had been a shift in gay self-consciousness since the 1970s, the arrival of HIV and Aids had once again turned public opinion against the acceptance of homosexuality, and that its popular and commercial representations were dominated by a stereotype of deviance. In contrast, the couples in Lovers: Ten Years On are shown as often quite ordinary, white middle-class, professional people in long term monogamous relationships. Gupta wrote: