Citizens

Richard Hamilton, The citizen  1981–3

The citizen was based on stills from a 1980 news report about the IRA ‘dirty protest’ at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Paramilitary inmates had initially been given a ‘Special Category’ status. This was revoked, and they were treated as ordinary criminals. In response they decided to wear only prison 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.

Gallery label, January 2019

Andrea Bowers, The Worker’s Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane)  2015

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.

Gallery label, February 2016

Fred Wilson, Saint Vincent-Grenadines  2009

Fred Wilson, Senegal  2009

Fred Wilson, Benin  2009

Fred Wilson, Seychelles  2009

Fred Wilson, Swaziland  2009

Fred Wilson, Ghana  2009

Fred Wilson, Jamaica  2009

Fred Wilson, Nigeria  2009

Fred Wilson, Zimbabwe  2009

Fred Wilson, Gabon  2009

Fred Wilson, Haiti  2009

Fred Wilson, Comoros  2009

Fred Wilson, Dominica  2009

Fred Wilson, Antigua-Barbuda  2009

Fred Wilson, Central African Republic  2009

Fred Wilson, Niger  2009

Fred Wilson, Trinidad-Tobago  2009

Fred Wilson, Uganda  2009

Siah Armajani, Seven Rooms of Hospitality  2017

This multi-part work by the Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani comprises seven 3D-printed plastic architectural models, individually titled, which relate directly to the artist’s large-scale works in his series Rooms for Hospitality 2017 (one of which is also in Tate’s collection; see the installation Room for Deportees 2017 [Tate T15571]). The models began as a response to an incident that took place in August 2015, in which seventy-one refugees and asylum seekers from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were found suffocated in the back of a lorry that had been abandoned on the side of an Austrian motorway. Using 3D printing techniques, Armajani created a miniature replica of the truck; titled Room for Asylum Seekers, it features the logo of the Hyza meat company and the banner text: ’71 ASYLUM SEEKERS • 60 MEN • 8 WOMEN • 3 CHILDREN • ALL DEAD’. Also in the group are six other architectural evocations of the conditions suffered by migrants and refugees, largely equated with the experiences of confinement, liminality and invisibility. (At the time of the tragedy, HYZA as. did not own the lorry, it having been sold the previous year to a third party who, in breach of their obligations, failed to remove the HYZA logo and advertising. HYZA has condemned the act and expressed its sympathy with the victims.)