Ideas into Action 1965–1980

Bruce McLean, Pose Work for Plinths I  1971

Bruce McLean first made this work as a performance. He repeated the poses from his performance for these photographs. They are an ironic and humorous commentary on Henry Moore’s monumental reclining sculptures, which McLean found pompous. The plinth in McLean’s work is also a pointed reference to another established British sculptor, Anthony Caro. Caro strongly rejected the use of plinths in sculpture. He taught at St Martin’s School of Art when McLean was a student there (1963–6).

Gallery label, September 2023

Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document. Documentation III: Analysed Markings And Diary Perspective Schema (Experimentum Mentis III: Weaning from the Dyad)  1975

These panels form one part of a much larger work that documents the relationship between Kelly and her son over a period of six years. Here, she takes drawings and scribbles done in chalk or crayon by her son and overlays them with typewritten reflections on conversations with him as he begins nursery school. Drawing on feminist thinking of the time she explores the contradictions between working as an artist and her role as a mother – between ‘my lived experience and my analysis of that experience’.

Gallery label, November 2018

Neil Kenlock MBE, ‘Keep Britain white’ graffiti, Balham  1972, printed 2010

Neil Kenlock worked for commercial studios before becoming a freelance photographer. He joined the Black Panther movement, which worked to combat racial oppression, police brutality and discrimination. From the movement’s early days in the UK, Kenlock documented its activities and demonstrations. On display here is a portrait of four young girls posing with their customised bags, embroidered with Black Panther emblems. For Kenlock, the photograph ‘Keep Britain White’ Graffiti, Balham is one of his most important images. He said, ‘It reminds people of what life was like for new immigrants in the UK.

Gallery label, September 2023

Stephen Willats, Living with Practical Realities  1978

Stephen Willats aimed to explore the realities of living in a British tower block. The work centres on Mrs Moran, an elderly woman who lived at Skeffington Court in Hayes, West London. Willats photographed and interviewed Mrs Moran over the course of six months. The text in the work is based on these interviews. In his composition, Willats highlights the physical, social and economic constraints that she faced. Each panel also features a question. These invite the viewer to participate directly in Mrs Moran’s lived experiences.

Gallery label, September 2023

Penny Slinger, Dust to Dust  1970–7

This is one of five photo-collages in Tate’s collection – Bird in the Hand, End of the Line 2, Perspective, Diamond Sutra / Deliverance and Dust to Dust (Tate T15174–T15178) – from a series originally published in book form in 1977 as An Exorcism by Villiers Publications for Empty-Eye. For An Exorcism, Slinger staged her own mises-en-scène in the then abandoned Lilford Hall near Peterborough in Northamptonshire, producing performative self-portraits over the course of seven years in the manner of early surrealists such as Claude Cahun, Hannah Höch and Dorothea Behrens. In these she employed the tools of the surrealist movement to explore the feminist psyche, delving into the unconscious and subconscious in the pursuit of the psychic integration which she understood to be the cornerstone of self-liberation. As well as examining the idea of the self, the series looks at liberation, sex, desire, the dream realm and memory. It was created in the tradition of the classical ‘photo-romance’, taking inspiration from works by Max Ernst such as La femme 100 têtes 1929 and Une semaine de bonté 1934 (as a student at the Royal College of Art, London in the late 1960s, Slinger had written her thesis on Ernst). The theatricality of the staged scenes may stem from the fact that Slinger was also involved in the dramatic arts with the all-women theatre troupe Holocaust in 1971, as well as appearing in the avant-garde feature film The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), directed by Jane Arden, and working on the production and design for Pablo Picasso’s play The Four Little Girls at the Open Space Theatre, London in 1971.

Sir Horace Ové CBE, Darcus Howe Speaks at the Mangrove Demonstration  1970, printed 2023

Sir Horace Ové CBE, The Mangrove Nine at Court House  1970, printed 2023

Katherine Gili, Vertical IV  1975

Vertical IV 1975 is a freestanding steel sculpture which has been zinc sprayed and painted brown. Standing over two metres high, it is constructed from flat pieces of steel, bolted and welded together. Rising from the ground at different angles, its primary components are three long planes of steel that visually cohere into an abstract form akin to an extended tree structure. The arrangement of the work, with its variously angled planes, invites the viewer to move around it, experiencing it in its changing form, depending on the viewing position.

Ian Burn, Blue Reflex  1966

Ian Burn wanted to leave no trace of how he made this work, and to give it a uniform finish. To achieve this, he smoothed ply-board, before applying lacquer usually used on car paint with an airgun. Burn created a work that reflects spectators and prompts our awareness of the act of looking. In doing so, he aimed to challenge the belief that painting should stand alone and be removed from everyday concerns. This was a dominant view championed by the influential US art critic Clement Greenberg.

Gallery label, September 2023

Barry Flanagan, aaing j gni aa  1965

Flanagan’s work of this period was highly innovative and departed from the sculptural practice of his tutors, notably in his choice of ‘un-sculptural’ materials. He filled pre-stitched cloth ‘skins’ with amorphous matter (often sand and wet plaster) to produce bulging, organic forms. As Flanagan explains: ‘I liked the idea that the shapes virtually made themselves’. The title is a palindrome. Not only does it undermine any single meaning but it reiterates Flanagan’s interest in the experimental possibilities for sculpture. This work enjoyed swift acclaim and appeared in his first solo show at the Rowan Gallery in 1966, the summer after he graduated.

Gallery label, May 2007

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Dogs Hairdressing, Shields Road (Byker)  1981, printed 2014

This photograph is from the extended series Byker 1969–81 by the Finnish-born British photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. The series documents the streets, buildings and primarily the inhabitants of Byker, a working class community in the north-east of England. Dogs Hairdressing, Shields Road (Byker) shows a woman wearing a checkered tabard who is bending over to pour steaming hot water into a bucket. In the corner of the stark room is a wet, long-haired dog, standing in a puddle of soap suds. A brush leans against the wall, ready to be used on the dog to finish its grooming. This work is one of a number of gelatin silver prints in Tate’s collection that Konttinen printed from the 1969–81 series between 2012 and 2014. As is customary in Konttinen’s practice, the photographs are not editioned. All of the prints are signed and inscribed in pencil on the reverse with the title of the series, Byker, and the image and print dates.

Sir Horace Ové CBE, Barbara Beese at the Mangrove Demonstration  1970, printed 2023

Richard Long CBE, Turf Circle  1966

Richard Long leaves the studio to create work in outdoor settings. During walks he subtly marks his presence. In the works represented here, he records a temporary impression on turf and picks daisies along two lines to form an ‘X’. These interventions won’t last, but are made permanent in the form of photographs. ‘These works are of the place, they are a rearrangement of it and in time will be reabsorbed by it. I hope to make work for the land, not against it,’ he said.

Gallery label, September 2023

Sir Michael Craig-Martin, Six Foot Balance with Four Pounds of Paper  1970

By balancing a lead weight of four pounds with a stack of paper, Craig-Martin upsets our visual expectations, since we instinctively associate paper with lightness and lead with density. The paper consists of just over 40 thick sheets, each of which bears an identical lithographic print depicting the lead weight. ‘Art always involves looking at something familiar as though it were unfamiliar’, Craig- Martin has said. ‘It doesn’t invent anything: everything that art deals with is around.’

Gallery label, April 2005

Penny Slinger, End of the Line 2  1977

This is one of five photo-collages in Tate’s collection – Bird in the Hand, End of the Line 2, Perspective, Diamond Sutra / Deliverance and Dust to Dust (Tate T15174–T15178) – from a series originally published in book form in 1977 as An Exorcism by Villiers Publications for Empty-Eye. For An Exorcism, Slinger staged her own mises-en-scène in the then abandoned Lilford Hall near Peterborough in Northamptonshire, producing performative self-portraits over the course of seven years in the manner of early surrealists such as Claude Cahun, Hannah Höch and Dorothea Behrens. In these she employed the tools of the surrealist movement to explore the feminist psyche, delving into the unconscious and subconscious in the pursuit of the psychic integration which she understood to be the cornerstone of self-liberation. As well as examining the idea of the self, the series looks at liberation, sex, desire, the dream realm and memory. It was created in the tradition of the classical ‘photo-romance’, taking inspiration from works by Max Ernst such as La femme 100 têtes 1929 and Une semaine de bonté 1934 (as a student at the Royal College of Art, London in the late 1960s, Slinger had written her thesis on Ernst). The theatricality of the staged scenes may stem from the fact that Slinger was also involved in the dramatic arts with the all-women theatre troupe Holocaust in 1971, as well as appearing in the avant-garde feature film The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), directed by Jane Arden, and working on the production and design for Pablo Picasso’s play The Four Little Girls at the Open Space Theatre, London in 1971.

Neil Kenlock MBE, Black Panther school bags  1970, printed 2010

Neil Kenlock worked for commercial studios before becoming a freelance photographer. He joined the Black Panther movement, which worked to combat racial oppression, police brutality and discrimination. From the movement’s early days in the UK, Kenlock documented its activities and demonstrations. On display here is a portrait of four young girls posing with their customised bags, embroidered with Black Panther emblems. For Kenlock, the photograph ‘Keep Britain White’ Graffiti, Balham is one of his most important images. He said, ‘It reminds people of what life was like for new immigrants in the UK.

Gallery label, September 2023

Richard Long CBE, England 1968  1968

Richard Long leaves the studio to create work in outdoor settings. During walks he subtly marks his presence. In the works represented here, he records a temporary impression on turf and picks daisies along two lines to form an ‘X’. These interventions won’t last, but are made permanent in the form of photographs. ‘These works are of the place, they are a rearrangement of it and in time will be reabsorbed by it. I hope to make work for the land, not against it,’ he said.

Gallery label, September 2023

Rose English, Harriet and Plait  1976

Harriet and Plait 1976 consists of six almost identical black and white photographs arranged sequentially in two rows of three, from top left to bottom right. They depict the head and shoulders of a naked woman sitting with her back to the camera in front of a window at the head of a table covered in a white cloth. Her long plaited hair is stretched out behind her on the tablecloth. In the second image in the sequence, a pair of scissors appears in the scene at one corner of the table; in the next image, they have moved closer to the plait, the end of which is then snipped off and finally placed on a plate to resemble a triangle of pubic hair in the final photographs. Harriet and Plait is a unique work.

Cecilia Vicuña, Violeta Parra  1973

This painting is part of a series called Heroes of the Revolution. In 1952, singer and folklorist Violeta Parra embarked on a tour around rural Chile, recording and compiling folk music. She rescued a tradition that most Chileans had forgotten. This led to an artistic movement known as Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song). The painting commemorates Parra’s work and struggle before she took her own life in 1967. ‘My paintings are political in a personal way’, Vicuña has explained. ‘My canvases are born as representations of a socialist paradise where everything is possible’.

Gallery label, September 2023

Penny Slinger, Perspective  1970–7

This is one of five photo-collages in Tate’s collection – Bird in the Hand, End of the Line 2, Perspective, Diamond Sutra / Deliverance and Dust to Dust (Tate T15174–T15178) – from a series originally published in book form in 1977 as An Exorcism by Villiers Publications for Empty-Eye. For An Exorcism, Slinger staged her own mises-en-scène in the then abandoned Lilford Hall near Peterborough in Northamptonshire, producing performative self-portraits over the course of seven years in the manner of early surrealists such as Claude Cahun, Hannah Höch and Dorothea Behrens. In these she employed the tools of the surrealist movement to explore the feminist psyche, delving into the unconscious and subconscious in the pursuit of the psychic integration which she understood to be the cornerstone of self-liberation. As well as examining the idea of the self, the series looks at liberation, sex, desire, the dream realm and memory. It was created in the tradition of the classical ‘photo-romance’, taking inspiration from works by Max Ernst such as La femme 100 têtes 1929 and Une semaine de bonté 1934 (as a student at the Royal College of Art, London in the late 1960s, Slinger had written her thesis on Ernst). The theatricality of the staged scenes may stem from the fact that Slinger was also involved in the dramatic arts with the all-women theatre troupe Holocaust in 1971, as well as appearing in the avant-garde feature film The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), directed by Jane Arden, and working on the production and design for Pablo Picasso’s play The Four Little Girls at the Open Space Theatre, London in 1971.

Rose Finn-Kelcey, The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position  1975

This photograph was inspired by a snapshot of Rose Finn-Kelcey’s mother. The artist revisited a beach near Dungeness, Kent, where her family had gone when she was a child. There she took photographs of herself performing handstands. This image appears to capture an exuberant, impulsive gesture. But the work’s subtitle suggests the difference between the experience and what is visible to the spectator. The artist’s later work continued to explore the inconsistency between inner life and external perception.

Gallery label, September 2023

Barry Flanagan, pile 3 ‘68  1968, reconstructed 1985

Donald Locke, Dageraad From the Air  1978–9

Dageraad was a sugar plantation. In 1763 it was the site of Guyana’s first rebellion of enslaved people. The painting evokes the plantation system that shaped Guyana’s history under Dutch and British colonial rule. The grid reflects the intervention on the land, sectioned by dykes and drainage canals. Donald Locke said: ‘In the Caribbean, the most dominant sociological event is the plantation system. I grew up at a time when the plantation system was still in existence. It dominated the sky; it dominated your life from beginning to end.’

Gallery label, September 2023

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Lady with the Beehive (Byker)  1971, printed 2012

This photograph is from the extended series Byker 1969–81 by the Finnish-born British photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. The series documents the streets, buildings and primarily the inhabitants of Byker, a working class community in the north-east of England. Lady with the Beehive (Byker) is a portrait of a woman dressed in a textured, patterned coat, with long dark hair that partially trails down her shoulders, while the upper part is arranged in a beehive hairstyle on the crown of her head. Although she poses in the manner of a traditional studio portrait, with her hands clasped together in her lap, she looks pensive and casts her gaze away from the camera. This work is one of a number of gelatin silver prints in Tate’s collection that Konttinen printed from the 1969–81 series between 2012 and 2014. As is customary in Konttinen’s practice, the photographs are not editioned. All of the prints are signed and inscribed in pencil on the reverse with the title of the series, Byker, and the image and print dates.

Gavin Jantjes, A South African Colouring Book  1974–5

Gavin Jantjes made these prints from a collage of photographs, news cuttings, drawings and text. Classifying citizens in terms of four ‘colours’ was central to South Africa’s racist Apartheid era, the main subject of this work. Whites Only is based on signs installed in public spaces across apartheid South Africa. Colour these People Dead includes images of the aftermath of the infamous Sharpeville Massacre, when 300 white police opened-fire on an unarmed Black crowd. Economic exploitation across industries, from the mines to the domestic space, is similarly addressed in the work. Jantjes also included his own identity pass, which classifies him as a ‘Cape Coloured’.

Gallery label, September 2023

Gilbert & George, In the Bush  1972

Collaborative art duo Gilbert & George adopted the identity of ‘living sculptures’ in their art and daily lives. They started making films to reach a wider audience. In The Bush sees them in London’s Kew Gardens, strolling by a tree they thought was the wildest in the park. The soundtrack is from a BBC recording of bird sounds. Placing themselves in a cultivated landscape, but beside an untamed-looking tree, they seem to ask us to have a sceptical if detached eye when thinking about conventionally accepted appearances and behaviours.

Gallery label, September 2023