Tate Artists and Society

RACHEL WHITEREAD AND MARWAN RECHMAOUI

Art can hold up a mirror to contemporary life, raise awareness about urgent issues or argue for change, as the artworks in this display demonstrate.

This opening room brings together two artists who use high-rise buildings as symbols for wider social, economic and political situations. Multi-storey buildings were embraced by city planners across the world from the mid-twentieth century as an alternative to urban sprawl that would transform neighbourhoods for the better.

Rachel Whiteread's series captures the destruction of concrete tower blocks in east London housing estates in the early 1990s. These images were made at a time of increasing social inequality and homelessness and record the failure of this utopian optimism.

Marwan Rechmaoui's sculpture represents a high-rise building that still dominates the Beirut skyline. It was built as an office block but was unfinished at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War 11975-1990) and became a sniper outpost. Too difficult and expensive to demolish, it now serves as an unofficial memorial to the conflict and its effect on the city.

Both Whiteread and Rechmaoui look at the trace of recent history on the contemporary city. Many of the artists shown in the following rooms are witnesses to society as it is. Others work towards social change. The belief that art can show us a better world is present here too. Artists have found many different means to express their ideas, whether forcefully communicating an explicit political message or inviting us to find our own way through layers of meaning.

A VIEW FROM SAO PAULO: ABSTRACTION AND SOCIETY

This room looks at abstract works from different moments in the twentieth century which reflect the aspiration to invent a new society. With a focus on artists associated with the St. Paulo Biennial, it includes work by Latin American artists who emerged in the 1950s, as well as European artists from the first half of the twentieth century.

The Sao Paulo Biennial was founded in 1951, a moment of rapid economic growth and urban development in Brazil. This was also a time when younger artists in Sao Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro were developing a new form of geometrical abstraction.

From the European abstract art of the early twentieth century, they took a rigorous approach to art that was infused with political idealism.

By rejecting the past and embracing new forms, abstraction was associated with ideas of social change.

Revisiting these ideas and ideals in the 1950s, artists in Brazil developed more personal forms of abstraction to 'express complex human realities" in the words of Ferreira Gullar's Neo-Concrete Manifesto 1959. This led to new experimental practices involving participation and performance in which the artwork entered directly into everyday life.

This is one of a series of rooms at Tate Modern, each offering 'a view from' a different city. They focus on a period when new approaches to art-making emerged, developing locally and in dialogue with artists from other parts of the world.

Fernand Léger 1881-1955 Born Crance, worked France, USA, Switzerland

Two Women Holding flowers 1954 Deux femmes tenant des fleurs

Oil paint on canvas

Leger often painted works showing two women together. This theme of a pair of figures had precedents in classical art and allowed the artist to explore the rhyming shapes and patterns created by the symmetrical image.

Here two women are seen with their limbs intertwined, in a state of physical ease and relaxation.

One holds a flower, a symbol of natural beauty and fertility. However, this is no rustic idyll. The figures are drawn as outlines upon an abstract background of seemingly casually arranged rectangles of bright colours, giving the painting a typically modern sense of energy and dynamism.

Piet Mondrian 1872-1944 Born Netherlands worked Netherlands, France, Britain, USA

Composition C (No.Ill) with Red, Yellow and Blue 1935 Oil paint on canvas

This composition is a prime example Mondrian's astonishingly limited visual language. It consists of just horizontal and vertical lines in black, with planes of white and the three primary colours, from which all other colours are derived by mixing.

The structure, the order of the elements in a coherent whole and the pure colour were meant to suggest an ethical view of society.

Each individual element and the configuration to which it contributes were intended to symbolise the relationship between the individual and the collective, or the universal.

Sersio de Camarso 1930-1990 Born Brazil, worked Brazil, France

Large Split Relief No.34/4/74 1964-5 Grand relief fendu No. 34/4174 Polyvinyl acetate paint on limewood on plywood support

Brazilian artist Camarso lived in Paris from 1961 to 1974. While living there he made a number of monochrome white works composed of cylindrical pieces of diagonally cut wood, including Large Split Relief. These reliefs, which resemble crystalline 8rowth, 8enerate a play of light and shadow across

their surface. The work also highlights the natural material roughness of the wood, creating a dialogue between the organic textures of nature and the carefully crafted character of art.

Josef Albers 1888-1976 Born Germany, worked Germany, USA

Repetition Against Blue 1943 Oil paint on fibreboard

Albers was fascinated by the nature of visual perception. These interlocking shapes play

with ideas of perspective, destabilising our sense of what is foreground and what is background. The work also shows his growing interest in colour, which he explored during his later years in the United States. He had taught at the Bauhaus school of art and design in Germany until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Albers brought its vision of connecting art and everyday life with him to a new teaching post at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

H lio Oiticica 1937-1980 Born Brazil, worked Brazil, USA

Metaesquema 1958 Gouache on cardboard

Oiticica often worked in series, or bodies of works. The Metaesquema include over 350 small scale paintings on card. These compositions of opaque, monochrome, geometric forms, often in primary colours, were inspired by the abstract art of Pier Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich. In contrast to the rigorous order and structure of both European artists, however, Oiticica introduces elements of instability into his works. The forms appear to jostle and bump together as though they are moving.

CIVIL WAR

The works in !his room find visual expression for the complex horrors of civil war.

In times of war, art has long been a means of protesting against suffering and also of remembering the dead. The twentieth century was marked by a number of civil wars that set neighbours and families against one another. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-9 had a particularly powerful impact in Europe and the wider Spanish speaking world to which exiles fled.

Artists often focused on the plight of civilians. From Paris, Pablo Picasso chronicled the massacres of Basque civilians in works such as Weeping= Woman 1937 which compresses the suffering of thousands into the representation of a single figure. By contrast, Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros turned to abstraction to express his despair at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

The process of decolonisation in the second half of the century was rarely peaceful and often marked by especial bitterness. Malangatana Nswenya's dense weave of images evokes his experience during the "war of liberation from Portuguese rule in Mozambique. In the face of inhumanity, artists can bear witness and commemorate, bringing painful issues to the surface, both personally and publicly.

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Born Spain, worked Spain, France

Weeping Woman 1937 Femme en pleurs Oil paint on canvas

One of the worst atrocities of the Spanish Civil War was the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the German air force, lending their support to the Nationalist forces of General Franco. Picasso responded to the massacre by painting the vast mural Guernica, and for months afterwards, he made subsidiary paintings based on one of the figures in the mural: a weeping woman holding her dead child. Weeping Woman is the last and most elaborate of the series.

The woman's features are based on Picasso's lover Dora Maar.

Salvador Dali 1904-1989 Born Spain, worked Spain, France, USA

Autumnal Cannibalism 1936 Oil paint on canvas

Painted just after the outbreak of the Spanish

Civil War in 1936, this work shows a couple locked in a cannibalistic embrace. They are pictured on a table-top, which merges into the earthy tones of a Spanish landscape in the background. The conflict between countrymen is symbolised by the apple balanced on the head of the male figure, which refers to the legend of William Tell, in which a father is forced to shoot at his son.

KAVEH GOLESTAN

Kaveh Golestan's socially engaged photography exposes the plight of people living on the margins of society.

This series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, documents sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup a wall was erected around the area, creating an inner-city ghetto where approximately 1,500 women lived and worked. Here Golestan witnessed 'the social, financial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society...magnified:This series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, documents sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup a wall was erected around the area, creating an inner-city ghetto where approximately 1,500 women lived and worked. Here Golestan witnessed 'the social, financial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society...magnified:

Golestan spent several years researching the area and gaining the trust of the residents, developing a connection with his subjects evidenced by the sensitivity of his portraits. Golestan believed in the power of art to challenge accepted narratives. By documenting harsh realities with brutal honesty he hoped to raise awareness of the issues facing society and encourage the public to take action.

Golestan commented, 'I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security. You can look away, tum off, hide your identity.., but you cannot stop the truth. No one can"

During the Iranian revolution of 1979 Shahr-e, No was deliberately set alight. The authorities made no attempt to put out the fire and there are no records of how many women died. Under the newly formed Islamic Republic, the area was demolished in an act of 'cultural cleansing' and today bears no reference to its past. Golestan's images are among the last known records of the women of Shahr-e No.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS

From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried 1995-6 by American artist Carrie Mae Weems presents a highly personal history of the African American experience.

The images were chosen by the artist from a number of archives, including daguerrotypes of slaves taken in the 1850s, and extend to the 1950s and the Civil Rights era. The sequence begins and with an image of the wife of a Mangbetu chief, taken in the 1920s in the Belgian Congo, creating the impression that she is bearing witness to this tragic history.

Weems rephotographed and enlarged the images, overlaying with a red tint and mounting them behind glass. A series of texts were etched onto the glass to form a powerful, poetic commentary.

Text and image show African Americans being forced into servile roles, such as cooks, maidservants or sexual objects. They are presented as evidence to prove dubious scientific theories, and as stereotypical characters in novels.

With the image of a man's brutally whipped back, Weems does not shy away from the violence underlying slavery. She is also willing to confront the complexity of this history, showing that some Black women were forced to give birth to their masters' children, while another is accused of being an 'accomplice: Above all, by addressing the subjects of the photographs as 'you; the text encourages the viewer to recognise each face as an individual rather than as a social or historical type.

ARTIST ROOMS: JOSEPH BEUYS

Lightning with Stag in its Glare 1958-85

Bronze, iron, aluminium, compass (39 elements)

German artist Joseph Beuys saw creativity as central to all aspects of human existence. As well as sculpture and performance, his work as an artist came to encompass social theory and political action.

Beuys's activities became explicitly politicised in the 1970s. A series of confrontations with the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf over the number of students that he could admit to his class led to wider questions about access to education and the relationship between ordinary people and authority. In 1971 he founded a Free Academy and the more overtly political Organisation for Direct Democracy through Referendum. Beuys argued that social decision-making should be made by the people through referendums rather than elected political parties. It was this concept of 'direct democracy' that he explored in his Information Action at the Tate in 1972, from which three of the blackboards shown here are taken. Later he became involved in the German Green Party and organised the planting of 7000 oak trees around the city of Kassel.

In 1982, Beuys took part in an exhibition in Berlin, where he installed a huge mound of clay and surrounded it with sculptures as well as furniture and tools from his studio. Afterwards, he made casts of some of the elements to create Lightning with Stag in its Glare 1958-85. The bolt of lightning itself was a bronze cast from a section of the clay mound, while the stag was cast in aluminium, as if illuminated by a sudden flash of light. Made towards the end of Beuys's life, this major installation addresses themes of finality and death, but also ideas of regeneration and the transformative power of nature.

In this massive installation, the suspended, bronze triangle embodies the energy of a powerful flash of lightning, which illuminates a group of half-formed creatures. The 'stag' of the title was originally made from an ironing board and then cast in bright aluminium to suggest the glare of the lightning. The cart represents a goat, and the clods of bronze on the floor are primordial creatures.

A small compass, mounted on top of a box, is another reference, with the lightning flash itself, to the natural energies of the earth.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

This is How to Overcome the Dictatorship of the Political Parties 1971

So kann die Parteiendiktatur uberwunden warden

Felt, wood, and glass

In June 1967 Beuys formed the German Student Party, which he later renamed Fluxus Zone West to campaign for structural change at universities across Europe. In March 1970 he extended his activities to society as a whole with the 'Organisation of Non-Voters - Free Referendum'. Here, the cross at the centre resembles the mark left on a ballot, suggesting that the only way to overthrow the system is through voting.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

A Comparison of Two Types of Society 1971

Ein Vergleich Zweier Gesellshaftsformen Print on paper

This poster describes the tasks and goals of the 'Organisation of Non-Voters- Free Referendum'. It was also printed on carrier bags to be distributed in the street. On the other side of the bag was a diagram explaining different aspects of his political programme. A translation of these two diagrams appears in the next room, on the reverse of the Seven Exhibitions poster.

Joseph Beuys 1921-I 986 Born and worked Germany.

Direct Democracy- Referendum.

Düsseldorf 1971

Direkte Demokratie - Volksabsfimmung.

Düsseldorf

Print on paper

Beuys's concept of direct democracy draws upon the three principles of the French Revolution as interpreted by theosophist philosopher Rudolf Steiner: freedom (of the spirit), equality (before the law)and fraternity [in economics}. The 'Organisation for Direct Democracy through Referendum [Free People's Initiative, Inc.)' was conceived not as a party, but as a forum for discussing ways to achieve true democracy, rejecting both capitalism and socialism.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

Documenta 7 expects everybody to do his duty 1982 Print on paper. On 30 June 1982, as part of his contribution to documenta 7, Beuys melted a bold cast copy of the crown worn by Czar Ivan the Terrible into a symbol of peace, the Hare with Sun. The proceeds from its sale went toward the financing of a substantial part of 7000 Oak Trees.

ARTIST ROOMS

Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 AR00760

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked in Germany

7000 Oak Trees 1982 7000 Eichen Print on paper ln 1982, for documenta 7, Beuys proposed a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, each paired with a basalt stone.

The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and has spread to other cities around the world.

Joseph Beuys 1921-I 986 Born and worked Germany

Four Blackboards 1972 Ohne Titel

4 works on blackboard, chalk

Three of these boards were used by Beuys in his Information Action at the Tare Gallery

in 1972, at which he spoke and answered questions uninterruptedly for six and a half hours. The fourth was used the following day at the Whitechapel Gallery. The text on the third board reads: 'He who in 1972 can live carefree and sleep peacefully despite knowing that two thirds of humanity are hungry or dying of starvation while a large proportion of the well-fed third must take slimming cures in order, to stay alive should ask himself what kind of man one is and whether, moreover, he is a man at all.'

JOSEPH BEUYS INFORMATION ACTION

On 26 February 1972 Beuys presented Information Action as part of his contribution to Seven Exhibitions, a series of solo shows by different artists at the Tate Gallery.

In the Duveen Galleries, in what is now Tate Britain, Beuys lectured on humanity's innate creative capacity and the power of direct democracy to shape society. He chalked his ideas onto the three leftmost blackboards (the fourth was used subsequently at Whitechapel Gallery and engaged the crowd in a free-form and often tense discussion.

Not simply receptacles of ideas, the blackboards helped to determine the relationship between the artist and his audience, clearly signalling Beuys's role as instructor. The format of the talk also served to position Beuys at the work's centre. Photographs show the artist surrounded by onlookers, with a microphone to project his voice. One audience member suggested that the microphone worked at cross-purposes with Beuys's aims, reserving for him a power of speech that had been undemocratically denied to everyone else. Others agreed, and they held a vote to decide whether to keep using it.

The microphone survived, but the debate points to the work's most profound lessons. Whatever Beuys's intentions, democracy appeared not as an abstract ideal but as the means through which relations between people are organised. The microphone did not merely amplify or record what happened but structured what could happen in the first place.

Four Blackboards and Information Action embody some of the fundamental problems of political and social life - who gets to speak, by what authority, and how? Beuys's proclamation that 'everyone is an artist: that all people have the power to shape the world, was at its root a search for form. The legacy of Information Action suggests that he had not yet found the right one.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

For the lecture: "The Social Organism a Work of Art" Bochum, 2 March 1974 1974

Zu dem Vortrag: 'Der Soziale Organismus ein Kunstwerk', Bochurn 2.03.1974 Chalk on blackboard

Taken from a lecture given in the West German city of Bochum (advertised on one of the posters nearby), this blackboard explains Beuys' view that nature should be at the centre of our society. The arches and lines connecting animal, man and nature (represented by sketches of the sun and mountains)support his belief that we must listen to our natural instincts.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986

Born and worked Germany

The Revolution is Us 1972 La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi Silkscreen, ink and stamp on paper

This photograph of Beuys was originally used on a poster for an exhibition of his work held in Naples in 1971. Beuys poses as one of the figures in Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's 1901 painting The Fourth Estate, an iconic work influenced by early socialist ideas, depicting a crowd of workers striding into the future. Beuys encourages the viewers to take a step forward, but also stresses that each individual must change before a true revolution can take place.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

Beuys at the New School 1974 Print on paper

Beuys refused to travel to the USA during the Vietnam War until he finally accepted the invitation of New York gallerist Ronald Feldman. For his first trip, he chose not to do an exhibition but to engage in public dialogues with students and women's groups with Actions in New York, Minneapolis, and Chicago. The tour star!ed at the New School for Social Research in New York on 11 January, with a three-hour conference entitled The Energy Plan for the Western Man.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked in Germany

"What is to be done?" 1984.

Alternative Technology Versus Nuclear Power 1980

Appeal by Joseph Beuys 1980

Print on paper

Beuys's friendship with Edinburgh artist and gallerist Richard Demarco led to him visiting Scotland eight times. His 1980 exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival highlighted his alternative political and environmental concerns and the activities Of the Free International University.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 Born and worked Germany

Coyote 1977-8

Print on paper

Beuys's Action I Love America and America

Loves Me took place in May 1974 in a

New York gallery, where he spent three days locked in a room with a live coyote.

As soon as he got off the plane, he was wrapped in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery without touching American soil. The Action reflected Beuys' troubled relationship with the US and its politics. This poster was produced to advertise an exhibition of photographs of the Action shot by Beuys' collaborator Caroline Tisdall.

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson 1960

Born and works in the USA

Then & Now 2016

12 panels, ink and screen print on clay board

Simpson is known for her engagement with race and identity politics. This work was created by screen printing two found photographs, after which the artist worked on the surface by hand. The photographs were taken during the race riots in Detroit in July 1967, which began after police attempted to arrest all 82 customers in an unlicensed bar. Over the next five days, 43 people were killed, 1189 injured and over 2000 properties destroyed. Made at a time when police violence against African American citizens continues to dominate the headlines, Simpson's painting connects the events of 1967 to the present day

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates 1973 Born and works in the USA

Civil Tapestry 4 2011 Fire hoses and wood

In May 1963, a group of black school children and students were marching peacefully for equal rights in Birmingham, Alabama. Police used powerful fire hoses to break up the march, injuring many of the young protestors.

Gates has arranged strips of decommissioned fire hoses to resemble the composition of a 1960s American abstract painting- a form that pointedly failed to engage with the Civil Rights movement. Gates also questions whether the protestors' goals have been fulfilled. 'Some of us are slightly better while others are a great deal better: he has reflected, 'but... things are far from equal'.

Artur Zmijewski

Zmijewski

Born and works Poland

Democracies 2009 Video, projection, colour and sound Running time: 2 hours, 26 min

Aiming to blend into the crowd as much as possible, Zrnijewski and his cameramen filmed a series of politically charged gatherings, including demonstrations, military parades, and memorial services.

Many of the events are extreme rightwing and nationalistic, reflecting what the artist sees as a general cultural shift in Europe. '1 was less interested in the rightness or justice of the cause; Zmijewski has said, 'but more in this inner drive that moves people to debate, to publicly show their own needs, demands, requests, opinions- and to defend them with their own presence"

Khorramshahr

Photographs by Bahman Jalali Tehran: Soroush, 1982

Bahman Jalali was one of the most prominent and influential figures in Iranian photography. During the Iran-Iraq war, he documented the destruction of Khorramshahr, visiting the border town. almost forty times.

Khorramshahr, the resulting photobook, is reproduced here in its entirety. Jalali set out to create photographs that 'defined the war for the future'. He felt strongly that the violent realities of conflict in this area should be documented with an unflinching eye so they would not be forgotten. Embracing the photobook as a radical tool to engage the public, Jalali printed his work in a large format, inviting readers to tear out pages and use them as posters in their homes and on the streets.

IRANIAN PHOTOBOOKS: FROM REVOLUTION TO WAR

The photobooks in this display, drawn from the collection of Martin Parr, document the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

In the late 1970s, a series of increasingly violent demonstrations and protests were staged against Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last king of Iran. This discontent with the Shah's social and economic policies and his links to the west culminated in the revolution of 1979, leading to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the authority of Shia cleric Ayatollah Khomeini. The major regime change was followed by the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War.

The revolution and war were among the most documented political turmoils of the 20th century, recorded by journalists, filmmakers, graphic artists, painters, and broadcasters. Many of the most important images of the period were by Iranian photographers, determined to portray their own version of events. Kaveh Golestan commented: 'If the message of the Iranian Revolution was spelled in blood, then photography was the medium through which this message was delivered to the rest of the world.'

The photobooks, like all media produced during this period, were diverse in style, tone, and intent. Inexpensive to print and assemble, and easy to circulate, photobooks provided an instrument for protest and a vehicle for propaganda but were often subject to censorship.

At the height of the Iran-Iraq war, the state began to create their own publications, directly challenging the narratives of many independent photobooks. This display reveals how photographs were used to serve different political agendas and how images played a key role in the creation of conflicting narratives of national history.

Barth l my Toguo

Barth l my Toguo 1967 Born Cameroon, works Cameroon, France

Purification 2012 Watercolour and graphite on paper

This vast, banner-like watercolour painting is covered with a sequence of human figures interwoven with handwritten sentences taken from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Purification was born from my response to sufferings endured by various groups of people around the world (genocides, slaughters, deportations, discriminations) during the 20th century; Toguo has said. '1 have unrolled my vision in a nightmare frieze: human beings are abused, tortured, amputated, beaten to death... Man must regenerate his own culture... He must operate a purge over himself and purify [himself] from his crimes and horrors;.'

CITIZENS

Many of the works in this room were made as interventions in political debates, often drawing attention to those who have campaigned for citizenship and civil rights. In several cases, the choice of materials also has distinct political associations.

Richard Hamilton's The citizen 1981-3 depicts an IRA prisoner as a martyr-like figure. Demanding to be treated as a political prisoner rather than a criminal, he wore only his prison blanket and painted his faeces onto the cell walls. In Then and Now 2016, Lorna Simpson draws upon images of a 1967 race riot in Detroit to reflect on the legacy of racial violence in the United States today.

Other works address political struggle more obliquely. In Barth~l~my Toguo's Purification 2012, an array of human figures are intertwined with words from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Alluding to the fire hoses turned upon young black school children marching peacefully in Alabama in 1963, Theaster Gates' Civil Tapestry 4 2011 arranges hoses in a configuration that recalls abstract painting from the same period. Flag l was made when Teresa Margolles was representing Mexico at the 2009 Venice Biennale. As drug wars claimed the lives of thousands of people, she collected blood from murder scenes that she later transferred to doth, and hung a blood-stained flag outside the Mexican pavilion as a memorial for citizens that the nation would rather ignore.

By contrast with the other works, Artur Zmijewski's footage of public protests in Democracies 2009 focuses not only on those seeking freedoms but also on the crowd behaviour of extreme right-wing movements.

Richard Hamilton

1922-2011 Born and worked Britain

The citizen 1981-3 Oil paint on 2 canvases

The citizen was based on stills from a 1980 news report about the IRA 'dirty protest'. After the government revoked their Special Category status and began to treat them as ordinary criminals, inmates in Long Kesh decided to wear only pnson blankets and to daub their cell walls with excrement.

Hamilton wrote that he could not 'condone the methods' of the IRA, but was struck by the resemblance to Christian martyrdom. He also felt a connection to the prisoners since they had produced 'wall paintings'. One panel shows the prisoner and his.cell; the other is more abstract, an unconfined space.

Teresa Margolles 1963 Born and works Mexico

Flag12009

Bandera I

Fabric, blood, earth and other substances

The fabric of Flag l contains traces of blood, soil and other substances from the sites of murders around the northern border of Mexico, testifying to the thousands of violent deaths associated with the powerful drug cartels that control smuggling routes to the United States. Another version was shown at the Venice Biennial in 2009, where Margolles represented Mexico with an exhibition titled What Else Could We Talk About? As the government failed to intervene in the drug wars, the blood-stained cloth was hung outside the Mexican pavilion as a memorial for citizens that the nation ignored.

SUSAN NORRIE

In Transit 2011, Australian artist Susan Norrie explores the often confident relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Much of Transit depicts the aftermath of the 2011 Tokyo earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in Japan. The ensuing tsunami waves caused widespread floodin8 and the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. An anti-nuclear demonstration shows the anger and frustration that followed the disaster, while the destructive power of nature is reinforced by a plume of ash dsin8 from the Sakurajima volcano.

Even when portrayin8 scenes of chaos and ruin, however, Norde's elegant compositions, extended takes and slow camera movements create moments of serene beauty. 'When one is dealin8 with collective trauma and a sense of shame, it is important to imagine another possible world', she has said. 'Transit is an attempt to encapsulate the conflict between human capabilities and vulnerabilities, the challenges associated with technological advancement, and the unpredictable, catastrophic forces of nature.'

Norrie has collaborated for many years with the scientists of the Japanese Aerospace Asency (JAXA). The rockets shown takin8 off from the island of Tanesashima carry satellites to track weather patterns, global greenhouse emissions, and other environmental factors. Further reflections are provided through the voice of a shaman, Yoshimaru Hisa, who was interviewed by Norrie at Okinawa, and discusses the new perspectives made possible by Iooking back on our planet from space.

Andrea Bowers 1965 Born and works USA

The Worker's Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane) 2015 Ink on cardboard

The source for Bowers' drawing is an illustration by the British artist Walter Crane (1845-1915), published in The Clarion, a socialist magazine, in 1894. Emphasising a continuous tradition.of political activism, Bowers recreated the image on sections of cardboard boxes, using a permanent marker pen. She had seen similar materials used to construct placards by twenty-first century protestors such as the Occupy Wall Street encampment. She also altered some of the text on Crane's banners to reflect more recent political campaigns.

Bartholemy Toguo

1967 Born Cameroon, works Cameroon, France

Purification 2012 Watercolour and graphite on paper

This vast, banner-like watercolour painting is covered with a sequence of human figures interwoven with handwritten sentences taken from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 'Purification was born from my response to sufferings endured by various groups of people around the world (genocides, slaughters, deportations, discriminations) during the 20th century; Toguo has said. 'I have unrolled my vision in a nightmare frieze: human beings are abused, tortured, amputated, beaten to death... Man must regenerate his own culture... He must operate a purge over himself and purify [himself] from his crimes and horrors.'

LYNNE COHEN AND TARYN SIMON

These two series of photographs draw attention to spaces which are hidden, restricted or overlooked.

In 1971 Lynne Cohen began photographing interior spaces for the series Occupied Territon/Her systematic approach, taking each photograph from the same frontal perspective, simultaneously captures and makes strange our everyday environments. Cohen highlights the architecture and design of these ordinary spaces, finding sculptural forms in the commonplace. By drawing attention to the places where we live, work and spend our leisure time, the banal begins to look absurd, even staged.

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar Taryn Simon provides access to a series of restricted spaces. Simon explores a range of subjects from science and government to religion and entertainment, photographing the hidden sites that form an integral part of culture and identity in the United States. Simon's combination of text and image provides context for each space, opening up the images further, breaking down barriers of privilege and access.

By working in series both Cohen and Simon use photography as an investigative tool, exploring a single theme through multiple images, asking us to look closer at that which might otherwise remain unnoticed.

AN AMERICAN INDEX OF THE HIDDEN AND UNFAMILIAR TARYN SIMON

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, artist Taryn Simon compiles an inventory of what lies hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States. She examines a culture through documentation of subjects from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion. Confronting the divide between those with and without the privilege of access, Simon's collection reflects and reveals that which is integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning.

Jane Alexander 1959 Born and works South Africa

African Adventure 1999-2002 Fiberglass resin, plaster, synthetic clay, oil paint, acrylic paint, earth, found and commissioned garments and objects

JANE ALEXANDER

Combining human and animal forms and mixing recognisable and unfamiliar elements, Jane Alexander's African Adventure 1999--2002 addresses different histories of European engagement with Africa.

Alexander rose to prominence in the eady 1990s at the end of the apartheid era, as South Africa was opening up following Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the first democratic elections.

The country quickly became a fashionable tourist destination and an entry point to the rest of the continent. Travel agencies like African Adventure in Cape Town, after which this work is titled, emerged in response to the demand.

Adventure comprises thirteen figures on a rectangle of red earth, which references the infertile soil found in Bushmanland, an arid area of South Africa historically occupied by the indigenous people. The green walls and chandeliers evoke the British ~" Mess in the Castle of Good Hope, a fortress constructed by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century and the oldest surviving colonial building in South Africa, where this work was first instalment.

The objects positioned among the figures include sickles, machetes, a Victorian christening dress, boxes for explosives, a steel car and a worker's overalls. These relate to themes such as migration, trade, labour legacy, conflict and faith. But African Adventure does not present a particular moral or political message, as is often expected from work made in South Africa in the immediate apartheid~ era. Like lhe ~ human-animal characters who are both ~or~ and vulnerable, the work is ambiguous, moving between realism and metaphor, mixing the everyday with the uncanny.

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