Tacita Dean
| Tacita Dean | |
|---|---|
 Tacita Dean |
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| Born | Canterbury |
| Nationality | English |
| Field | Conceptual art, installation art |
| Training | Falmouth School of Art |
| Movement | Young British Artists |
Tacita Dean (born Canterbury, Kent, 1965) is an English visual artist who works primarily in film. She is one of the Young British Artists, and was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998.
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[edit] Life and work
Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, in Kent. She was educated at Kent College, Canterbury. Her brother is architect Ptolemy Dean. She studied at Falmouth School of Art, graduating in 1988. From 1990–2, Dean studied for a Masters degree at the Slade School of Fine Art. Dean held her first solo exhibition The Martyrdom of St Agatha and Other Stories, at Galerija Skuc, Maribor, Slovenia.
In 1995, she was included in General Release: Young British Artists held at the XLVI Venice Biennale.[1] She is one of the "key names",[2] along with Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume, Sam Taylor-Wood, Fiona Banner and Douglas Gordon,[2] of the Young British Artists (YBAs).[2][3] Her work actually had little in common with the prominent YBAs, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.[4]
In 1997, Dean moved to London. That same year she began to exhibit splices of magnetic tape cut the length required to document the duration of the sound indicated, such as a raven's cry. In 2001 she was given a solo show at Tate Britain. In 2000 Dean was awarded a one-year German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to Berlin, where she moved that year. She devoted attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany. She has made films of such iconic structure as the Berliner Fernsehturm and the Palast der Republik. Other projects have concerned important figures in post-war German cultural history, such as W.G. Sebald and Joseph Beuys.
2006 saw the most comprehensive retrospective of her work to date, ‘Analogue', held at Schaulager Basel.[5]
In 2009, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation has presented Still Life, Tacita Dean’s first major solo exhibition in Italy, on the first floor (piano nobile) of Palazzo Dugnani, a historic building in the centre of Milan. The exhibition has presented a selection of fourteen works, including the world premiere of two films commissioned and produced by the Nicola Trussardi Foundation: Still Life and Day for Night, filmed in the Bolognese studio of painter Giorgio Morandi.
Dean has undertaken commissions for London's defunct Millennium Dome, the Sadler's Wells Theatre, and for Cork, Ireland, as part of that city's European City of Culture celebrations. She has also completed residencies at the Sundance Institute, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, U.S., and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Berlin
She lives and works in Berlin.
[edit] Themes
Tacita Dean is best known for her work in 16mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. Her anamorphic films are shot by cinematographers John Adderley and Jamie Cairney. Her sound recordist is Steve Felton. She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as 'asides,' which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks.
Especially during the 1990s, the sea was a persistent theme in Dean's work. Perhaps most famously, she explored the tragic maritime misadventures of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur English sailor whose ambition to enter a race to solo circumnavigate the globe ended in deception, existential crisis and, eventually, tragedy.[6] Dean has made a number of films and blackboard drawings relating to the Crowhurst story, exploiting the metaphorical richness of such motifs as the ocean, lighthouses and shipwrecks.
Re-turning to her, attraction with the sea, Amadeus (swell consopio) was made for the Folkestone Triennial (three year art show) in 2008.[7]
[edit] Recognition
Following her 1996 film Disappearance at Sea, Dean was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998. She has since been awarded the Aachen Art Prize (2002), Hugo Boss Prize (2006),[8] and Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009), among others.
[edit] Solo shows
These include:
- Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1997);
- Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, with US tour (1998);
- Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2000),
- MACBA, Barcelona (2001);
- Tate St Ives (2005).
- Schaulager, Basel Tacita Dean. Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991–2006 (2006)
- Guggenheim Museum[The Hugo Boss prize 2006 Tacita Dean 23 February – 6 June (2007)
- Still Life, Palazzo Dugnani, Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan (2009)
[edit] Filmography
- The Story of Beard, 1992
- The Martyrdom of St Agatha (in several parts), 1994
- Girl Stowaway, 1994
- How to Put a Boat in a Bottle, 1995
- A Bag of Air, 1995
- Disappearance at Sea, 1996
- Delft Hydraulics, 1996
- Foley Artist, 1996
- Disappearance at Sea II, 1997
- The Structure of Ice, 1997
- Gellért, 1998
- Bubble House, 1999
- Sound Mirrors, 1999
- From Columbus, Ohio, to the Partially Buried Woodshed, 1999
- Banewl, 1999
- Teignmouth Electron, 2000
- Totality, 2000
- Fernsehturm, 2001
- The Green Ray, 2001
- Baobab, 2002
- Ztrata, 2002
- Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers), 2002
- Diamond Ring, 2002
- Mario Merz, 2002
- Boots, 2003
- Pie, 2003
- Palast, 2004
- The Uncles, 2004
- Presentation Sisters, 2005
- Kodak, 2006
- Noir et Blanc, 2006
- Human Treasure, 2006
- Michael Hamburger, 2007
- Darmstädter Werkblock, 2007
- Amadeus, 2008
- Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films), 2008
- Prisoner Pair, 2008
- Still Life, 2009
- Day for Night, 2009
- Craneway Event, 2009
- Manhattan Mouse Museum, 2011
[edit] See also
- Ptolemy Dean, brother[9] to Tacita Dean.
- Book Works, publisher.
[edit] References
- ^ "Scuola San Pasquale General Release: Young British Artists", British Council. Retrieved 14 June 2010.
- ^ a b c Grant, Simon. "Cultural propganda?"[sic], Apollo, 27 March 2009. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
- ^ Daly, Emma. "The once and future Oporto", The New York Times, 11 March 2001. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
- ^ Bush, Kate. "Young British art: Kate Bush on the YBA sensation", ArtForum, October 2004. Retrieved from findarticles.com, 14 June 2010.
- ^ See the accompanying catalogue: Theodora Vischer and Isabel Friedli (eds.): Tacita Dean, Analogue, Drawings 1991–2006
- ^ Tacita Dean: Disappearance at Sea from the National Maritime Museum
- ^ http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/tacita-dean
- ^ 'Hugo Boss Prize website'. Retrieved 31 January 2010.
- ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19981101/ai_n14188113/pg_2>
[edit] Further reading
- Barcelona 2001: Tacita Dean. Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Actar.
- Godfrey, M.: ‘Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean’s Floh,’ October vol. 114, Fall 2005, 90–119.
- Royoux, J-C. et al.: Tacita Dean. London: Phaidon, 2006.
- Trodd, T.: ‘Film at the End of the Twentieth Century: Obsolescence and Medium in the Work of Tacita Dean,’ Object 6, 2003/4.
- Vischer, T. and Friedli, I.: Tacita Dean. Analogue: Drawings 1991–2006. Basel: Schaulager, 2006.
- De Cecco, E.: Tacita Dean. Milano: postmedia books, 2004.
[edit] External links
- Tacita Dean exhibition at Tate St Ives, UK, 2005
- Tacita Dean in the Tate Collection — artist biography and works viewable online
- Tacita Dean: Recent films and other works — Past exhibition at Tate Britain
- Tacita Dean — Aerial View of Teignmouth Electron, Cayman Brac. 16 September 1998
- Waterlog exhibition featuring recent work Michael Hamburger 2007
- Frith Street Gallery, London
- Tacita Dean at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
- Works by Tacita Dean in Cal Cego. Contemporary Art Collection
- Artinfo.com.au review of 2009 ACCA exhibition by Tony Lloyd
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