Ruin Lust Tate exhibition, Tate Britain - London

From the love of architectural ruins depicted by artists such as JMW Turner and John Constable to the new and sometimes desacralizing interpretations of 20th century artists such as Keith Arnatt and John Latham.

The exhibition underway at the Tate Britain explores the ruin both as an object in slow, picturesque decline and as the product of the devastation of the world wars of the 20th century, as documented in the work of Graham Sutherland and Jane & Louise Wilson. The exhibition ranges from Paul Nash’s surrealistic fragments of 1930-40 to the work of Jon Savage, who depicted the desolate London of 1970, and from the classical ruins that are a constant presence in the work of Eduardo Paolozzi, Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Stezaker to the destruction of modernist buildings, as in Demolished – B: Clapton Park Estate 1996 by Rachel Whiteread.

The exhibition also features screenings of the film Kodak 2066 by Tacita Dean, testifying to the end of the production of 16 mm film, and 1984 and Beyond by Gerard Byrne, a round table discussion published by Playboy in 1963, in which a number of science fiction writers (including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein) talked about what the world would be like after 1984.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Exhibition : Ruin Lust
Location: Tate Britain, London UK
Images courtesy of Tate

http://www.tate.org.uk/

---

GALLERY