Constellations

Cameron Rowland, Assessment  2018

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Boy running with barrel)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Boy on tip toes)  2010

Belkis Ayón, The Supper  1991

Zoe Leonard, I want a president  1992/2018

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Two women hiding)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (People saluting)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Girl looking)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Fountain)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Car on fire)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Chair balancing on stick)  Date not known

Wifredo Lam, Ibaye  1950

Lam made this work in Havana, Cuba. He had returned home from Europe following the outbreak of the Second World War. This prompted him to explore Cuban identity and culture in his work. ‘I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country’. Here, an abstracted horned figure, pictured from the waist up, is set against a smoky grey background. Lam explored African-Cuban visual culture to address themes of social injustice, nature and spirituality. Through his work, Lam was able to challenge assumptions about non-European art.

Gallery label, August 2020

Anni Albers, TR III  1969–70

TR III is a square printed and embossed work on paper. It consists of a gold-printed surface into which small, wide-based triangles have been embossed in a tight motif of thirty-six neat rows. Some of the triangles point upwards while others point downwards, and further triangles of similar sizes are created by the unembossed negative spaces between them. Shimmering highlights are formed where the light catches the edges of the printed shapes and where it travels across the smooth gold surface of the composition’s thick border. Pencil inscriptions at the lower left and right give the title, the edition (number 38 of a total of 60), the artist’s name and the year of production. The lower left also bears two further embossed marks: a copyright symbol and the glyph of the zodiac sign of Gemini, which is the motif used by the print workshop Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited).

Richard Hamilton, The state  1993

Hamilton’s image of a patrolling British soldier expresses the unease of the army’s equivocal position in Northern Ireland. Brandishing a weapon, yet moving protectively backwards, he is both on the offensive and defensive. The rural Irish landscape and city streets behind him pose equal threats. Hamilton has incorporated real fabric into the soldier’s fatigues, merging pictorial representation and reality. The construction of images through costume and artifice has been a consistent concern in Hamilton's works.

Gallery label, November 2006

Lionel Wendt, [title not known]  c.1933–8

David Goldblatt, The destruction of District Six under the Group Areas Act. Cape Town, Cape. 5 May 1982  1982

David Goldblatt, The place to which the government wanted the people of Oukasie to move. Letlhabile Removal Camp, Transvaal. 30 November 1986  1986

Henri Matisse, Reclining Nude II  1927

This small sculpture is part of a series in which the female nude is treated with increasing abstraction. The reclining figure takes up the languid pose of the odalisque, a traditional view of the female nude, which Matisse regularly used in his paintings and drawings. A balance is struck between the sensual, relaxed curves and the robust form of the supporting arm and shoulder.

Gallery label, November 2011

Don McCullin, An Old Palestinian Couple Allowed to Leave the Massacre, Karantina, East Beirut  1976, printed 2013

Zarina Hashmi, Letters from Home  2004

This series of prints is based on letters written by the artist’s sister who lived in Pakistan. Lines of handwritten prose in Urdu are overlaid and obscured with maps and blueprints of distant homes and places. The letters mark significant moments – the death of a parent, for instance – and some of the prints bear impressions of places relevant to their estranged lives. Hashmi maps and conveys the experience of loss and dispossession due to political conflict. The break with the Urdu literary culture of undivided India is poignant for the artist who was born in Aligarh, a university town and centre of learning.

Gallery label, April 2013

Constantin Brancusi, Danaïde  c.1918

This is a stylised portrait of Margit Pogany, a Hungarian art student Brancusi met in Paris in 1910. He made a marble head of her from memory, then invited her to his studio. He was delighted when she recognised it. This is one of several bronzes based on the marble. Photographs show that Miss Pogany had a round face with large eyes and strong eyebrows, and wore her hair in a smooth chignon. Brancusi has refined her features down to the very purest form. The abstract curves of this piece, and of the other 'Danaïdes', can be seen as anticipating by some years, aspects of the classicising Art Deco style of the 1920s.

Gallery label, August 2004

Henri Matisse, Draped Nude  1936

This is one of a series of four pictures, all the same size, painted in the spring of 1936. In the first the woman's hands meet in the centre of the picture and the entire lower leg is depicted. This painting, the second in the series, shows Matisse concerned to relate the figure to the edges of the picture: her body fills the space, and the position of her arms, in particular, appears to emphasise the shape of the canvas. The floral patterning of the woman's gown and the exotic plant behind her serve as quiet reminders of the theme of the harem girl, or odalisque, which was central to Matisse's work.

Gallery label, September 2004

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Balloons escaping)  2010

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Right arm)  2010

Lionel Wendt, [title not known]  c.1933–8

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Untitled (Riots shields in the high street)  2010

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is laid in the tomb  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is nailed to the cross  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jesus is taken from the cross  1969

This is one in a series by Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya comprising fourteen linocut prints on paper in an elongated landscape format. The subject is a biblical one, with each of the prints depicting a different moment from Jesus’ last days on Earth as a man, beginning with his condemnation by Pontius Pilate and ending with his crucifixion and laying in the tomb. The episodes portrayed – known in Christian theology as The Stations of the Cross – are precisely detailed and dramatised in Onobrakpeya’s prints, but have been placed within an African setting. The apostles wear vividly patterned local Adire prints and those restraining Jesus appear to be wearing colonial-era police uniform. The overall palette of the series is blue and green, with hints of yellow and highlights in orange. Geometric shapes abound, recalling patterns found on traditional Nigerian textiles and architecture. While these forms structure the compositions, they also extend onto the crosses that feature prominently in many of the images. The prints are individually titled as follows: Jesus is Condemned to Death, Jesus Takes his Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Meets his Mother, Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus, Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face, Jesus Falls the Second Time, Jesus and the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus Falls the Third Time, Jesus’ Clothes are Torn Off, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Jesus Dies on the Cross, Jesus is Taken from the Cross and Jesus is Laid in the Tomb. Thirteen of the prints are number eight in an edition of fifty. Jesus Falls the First Time is number eight in an edition of forty-eight. Complete sets of the prints are rare; although they can be shown individually, they are ideally shown all together as they were in the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2001, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (London Bridge)  2017

American painter Marshall depicts a fictitious scene set at London Bridge in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Originally spanning the River Thames, in 1967 the bridge was rebuilt in America. In the centre of the painting, a man wears a sandwich board advertising a restaurant called Olaudah’s. Olaudah Equiano, born in West Africa around 1745 and sold into slavery, bought his freedom in 1767. He moved to London, where he became a prominent figure in the abolitionist movement. The two stories of displacement connect to financial opportunity: Equiano became a successful businessman, and Lake Havasu is now a tourist destination.

Gallery label, September 2018