Yuri Pattison, sun[set] provisioning 2019. Tate. © Yuri Pattison.
Though made nearly 200 years apart both artists reflect radiant and atmospheric sunsets
Yuri Pattison’s sun[set] provisioning digitally visualises an endlessly morphing ocean sunset, set in a structure made from the industrial steel shelving system Dexion. The images on the screen are generated in real time from data about the atmospheric conditions in this room. A ‘uRadMonitor’ monitoring system collects information about carbon dioxide, pollution particle matter (PM1/PM2.5/PM10), ozone, formaldehyde, temperature and humidity. Software then creates sunsets that allude to the phenomenon of spectacular sunsets caused by high amounts of pollution in the local atmosphere. The sunsets intensify and become more colourful as pollution levels increase. As we observe this digital response to our surroundings, Pattison invites us to question the complex relationship between how our observations and experiences of the natural world are represented.
A group of watercolours by JMW Turner surround Pattison’s installation. Painted over a period of 25 years, they show atmospheric skies. Turner devoted many pages of his sketchbooks to the visual effects of light, air, water and the accompanying natural phenomena of mist, storms and cloud. In some studies, Turner drags watercolour paint across the page as if to blur water and air. In others, the combination of fluid washes of watercolour with energetic brushstrokes creates a sense of perpetual movement and change in atmosphere. The subjects of some of the sketches are veiled in mist or dissolved in the light, giving them an ambiguous, abstract appearance.
John Constable, Yarmouth Jetty after 1823
In the early nineteenth century the seaside town of Yarmouth became a favoured middle-class holiday destination. Constable may have only visited Yarmouth once, in the 1790s. He used the sketches he made on that visit when painting this work in the 1820s. The subject of Yarmouth was so popular with collectors that Constable made two other versions. This painting was acquired by Constable’s doctor, Robert Gooch. According to the artist, Gooch used to place it on his sofa at breakfast to feel as though he were ‘on the seashore enjoying its breezes’.
Gallery label, March 2025
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artworks in Sunset Provision
Paul Pfeiffer, Morning After the Deluge 2003
Morning After the Deluge is a large-scale, single-projection video installation, preferably presented in a dedicated room where the projected image is directed onto a free-standing screen. The work features two pieces of real-time footage that the artist filmed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts – one a sunset over the Atlantic Ocean and the other a sunrise on Cape Cod Bay – that are merged together and presented on a continual loop. As the sun slowly disappears into the ocean on one side, it rises out of the water on the other. In this new arrangement, the usual figure-ground relationship is upended: the sun becomes a fixed point at the centre of the image while the horizon line becomes unfixed, slowly wandering across the frame from top to bottom.
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artworks in Sunset Provision
Art in this room
John Constable
Yarmouth Jetty
after 1823
Paul Pfeiffer
Morning After the Deluge
2003