Rene Matić, Chiddy Doing Rene’s Hair 2019, printed 2021. Tate. © Rene Matić.
14 rooms in Modern and Contemporary British Art
This final room in our five-century story of British art features artists of different generations working in Britain today. Some began exhibiting in the 1980s, while the youngest are in their twenties
All of these works were made in the last decade, mostly since 2020, and many are new to Tate’s collection. Our recent history has seen a succession of crises, ruptures and social justice movements in Britain and the world. These include the Brexit referendum, the Covid-19 pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, the election of Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and civil wars in Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan. Life today is increasingly shaped by the influence of digital technology, social media and the rise of AI. We continue to struggle with the planet-wide impact of the climate emergency.
Some of the artworks in this room allude to these critical events. Others open up spaces for broader reflections concerning community, difference and autonomy. Many speak to Black British experiences and histories of migration. Several centre the lives of Black women and queer people of colour – together or alone, real or imagined, joyful or defiant. Genres are redefined, as artists shift expressive abstract painting to reflect their own lived experience. Older histories sometimes reappear, such as the spectre of the Iraq War and the long decline of heavy industry in the UK.
The ocean is pictured here too. As an island nation with an extraordinarily global history, so much of British culture, society and art is shaped by our relationship to the sea.
Wolfgang Tillmans, The State We’re In, A 2015
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Claudette Johnson MBE, Figure in raw umber 2018
Figure in Raw Umber 2018 is a large drawing in pastel on paper of a young black woman with close-cropped hair whose body twists towards the viewer as she gazes defiantly outwards. The drawing has been rendered using only two colours: raw umber, as suggested by the work’s title, and black, used sparingly to define creases in the model’s clothing. The skin is treated tonally, creating sensual depth through shading and smudging of pastel, while the body is rendered through quick broken lines that convey dynamic movement. In describing her process, Johnson has said:
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Mike Nelson, The Asset Strippers (Elephant) 2019
The Asset Strippers (Elephant) 2019 is a large sculptural assemblage made from reclaimed industrial items and materials. It was made as part of Mike Nelson’s larger project The Asset Stripers, his response to the Tate Britain Commission for the Duveen Galleries in 2019. A brilliant blue lathe balances on two wooden timbers on top of a pair of blue trestles. At the top of the lathe sits a dark green anglepoise lamp without a bulb. Positioned alongside at floor level are assorted lathe parts. Three of the parts lie horizontally, two stand upright. Each has been carefully placed in the manner of an archeological artefact or sculptural object, rather than an industrial machine part. The lathe and its component parts are placed on five abutting cast concrete slabs that together resemble a low-level traditional sculptural plinth. The compositional treatment of the parts, together with the monochromatic colour scheme, is reminiscent of British modernist sculpture, in particular the industrial assemblages of Anthony Caro (1924–2013). However, unlike much of Caro’s work, The Asset Strippers (Elephant) has not been painted or surface-treated. The patina of age and use of its reclaimed parts are visible in areas of rusting and traces of oil. Two other assemblages from The Asset Strippers are also in Tate’s collection: The Asset Strippers (Heygate stack, equivalent for a lost estate) 2019 (Tate T15412) and Double Drill (No. 15) 2019 (Tate T15411).
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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.
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Rachel Jones, lick your teeth, they so clutch 2021
lick your teeth, they so clutch 2020 is a large-scale landscape-format painting in oil stick on canvas. Like Jones’s earlier paintings, it employs a kaleidoscopic palette and boldness of form typical of her work. Here, fiery reds collide with fleshy pinks and acid yellows against the counterbalancing coolness of blues and greens, contributing to the sense of tension created by the competing forms and the interplay of textures. Jones’s characteristic use of oil sticks as her medium allows her to create an intensity of pigment, layering colour and melding different textural layers that result in a tactile painted surface suggestive of a physical, embodied and intuitive approach to mark-making.
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artworks in The State We're In
Veronica Ryan OBE, Arrangement in Layers, Stacking Up Moments 2016–19
Arrangement in Layers, Stacking Up Moments comprises ten structures made of closely stacked layers of cardboard avocado trays, piled upwards or resting on their sides, and arranged in a loose grouping on the floor. Some of the trays are glued together. The artist cut a circle through each stack and created ‘tubes’, or sacs, that transect the trays and hold them together. These tubes are made of crochet structures, dyed in different colours and sewn to the stacks of trays. Some of them contain seeds.
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Rene Matić, Jenny and Zac Holding Hands 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, VE Day, Skegness III 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Maggie in Morley’s 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Chiddy Doing Rene’s Hair 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Rene in Sheringham 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Mia and Faith at BBQ 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Ione’s Shoes 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Rene and Dad I 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Clap for Carers 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Skegness 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Maggie and Rene II 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Lost Bike 2019, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Mia and Cait Snogging I 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Rene at New Wave Tattoo 2020, printed 2021
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Rene Matić, Rudi at Christmas 2019, printed 2021
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Mohammed Sami, Electric Chair 2020
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Art in this room
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