Leonardo Drew, Number 185 2016. Presented by the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection (Tate Americas Foundation) 2021. © Leonardo Drew.
The reliefs in this room explore ideas of recycling and regeneration. The artists transform found and raw materials into carefully constructed abstract arrangements
In the late 1950s, Louise Nevelson started making reliefs by arranging objects she collected around the streets of New York City. She placed them in wooden boxes and crates which she then stacked against the walls of her studio. Black Wall is an early example of this approach, filled with pieces of scrap timber, such as joinery offcuts and fragments of furniture. The black painted finish unifies the disparate elements. Nevelson describes this practice as a form of collage, stating ‘I join the shattered world creating a new harmony’.
As a young artist in the 1970s, Leonardo Drew similarly gave new life to discarded remnants he collected from a landfill near his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He later used raw and natural materials to make abstract wall-based compositions. These works explore cycles of decay and regeneration, tensions between order and chaos and make implicit reference to African American history. In 112L, many hundreds of small pieces of wood are densely packed to form a rough square. Their irregularity maintains a sense of the organic within this carefully structured grid. In Number 185, long slats and logs protrude from a central grid, suggesting the force of nature disrupting the constructed world. Drew weathered and painted the wood used in these works to make them appear salvaged and charred. He describes ‘becoming the weather’ in his process of transforming the wood, emphasising our interconnectedness with forces larger than ourselves. Drew numbers his works rather than giving them descriptive titles. This allows viewers to create their own associations with their forms.
Edgar Calel, The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge 2021
Gallery label, April 2025
1/5
artworks in Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew
Bruce Conner, CROSSROADS 1976
Gallery label, April 2025
2/5
artworks in Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew
Gauri Gill, Rajesh Vangad, The Eye in the Sky 2016
Pictograms, as drawn by Vangad on Gill’s photograph, are symbolic signs that represent a word or idea. They are widely used in Warli artistic practices to share stories, there is no written form of the Warli language. Gill describes the process of collaborating across her and Vangad’s visual languages: ‘Rajesh’s language, constructed with stick and brush, unfolds entirely from an encyclopedia of forms in the mind, which emerge to reflect the world, memory and myth.’
Gallery label, April 2025
4/5
artworks in Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew
Zheng Bo, Pteridophilia I 2016
Zheng describes ferns as ‘queer plants’. Ferns reproduce from spores rather than seeds. Spores land on the ground and germinate, maturing into plants known as gametophytes. Gametophytes can be male, female or intersex, meaning they have both male and female sexual organs. They typically reproduce with one another but can reproduce asexually if necessary. As the artist explains, ‘I think our sexuality is also much more complex than just sperms and eggs… I hope we will start to see hypernormality as the minuscule portion of life on earth, whereas the great majority is queerness.’
Gallery label, April 2025
5/5
artworks in Louise Nevelson and Leonardo Drew
Art in this room
Edgar Calel
The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge
2021
Bruce Conner
CROSSROADS
1976
Sorry, no image available
Abbas Akhavan
Study for a Monument
2022
Gauri Gill, Rajesh Vangad
The Eye in the Sky
2016
Zheng Bo
Pteridophilia I
2016