Tacita Dean

Hugh Lane Gallery hosts British artist Tacita Dean’s first solo exhibition in Ireland. Based in Berlin since 2000, Tacita Dean trained as a painter and works in a variety of media. She is best known for her compelling 16mm films, in which the specific qualities associated with film-making are of central importance. The still nature of her films invokes associations with the qualities of painting.

Running through all Tacita Dean’s work is an obsession with time, especially with things which are on the verge of disappearance, especially objects and structures, which in their day promised much but have since become obsolete.

“For me, obsolescence is a state of normality. Everything that excites me no longer functions in its own time. The one thing I have noticed is that so often I am attracted to things conceived in the decade of my birth. I court anachronism – things that were once futuristic but are now out of date – and I wonder if the objects and buildings I seek were ever, in fact, content in their own time, as if obsolescence was invited at their conception” the artist states.

Part of Dean’s work follows the peregrinations of others in which she records places and moments in time, in search of images and sounds which explore the uncertain frontiers between reality, illusion and the imagination, sometimes overlapping with her own experiences.

Among the films included in this exhibition are Kodak (2006), Noir et Blanc (2006), Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers) (2002), The Green Ray (2001), and Presentation Sisters (2005), a work made in Ireland in 2005 in response to the South Presentation Convent, Cork, along with a related work from alabaster entitled Presentation Windows commissioned as part of Cork European Capital of Culture and curated by Sarah Glennie. Other works closely related to the films are a series of 25 photogravures entitled T&I (2006); Crowhurst II ,(2007), a large scale overpainted photograph; Magnetics Aviary, a collection of sound recordings on magnetic tape; other installation works and objets trouvés.

Profile

Tacita Dean graduated from Falmouth School of Art in 1988; studied at the Supreme School of Fine Art, Athens and took her Masters at the Slade School of Fine Art 1990 – 1992.

She trained as a painter, but is best known as a filmmaker. Her poignant narratives, which fuse fiction and reality, are imbued with elliptical allusions. Her abiding themes are the sea and architectural relics.

She was awarded the 2006 Hugo Boss Prize, the DAAD Fellowship, and in 1998 was short-listed for the Turner Prize. In 2011-12, her piece FILM was featured in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern as part of the Unilever series. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2013.