ART-PREVIEW:Steve McQueen

Born in London, England in 1969, Steve McQueen is an artist, film director, and screenwriter currently based in London and Amsterdam. His themes are universal and often focus on painful biographies. McQueen has mastered the art of minimalist storytelling to deliver the utmost impact on his viewers. In his own words he “wants to put the public in a situation where everyone becomes acutely sensitive to themselves, to their body and respiration.”

By: Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Tate Archive

Featuring 14 major works in  film, photography and sculpture, Steve McQueen’s exhibition is an opportunity to experience the depth his visual art career in UK for the first time since he received the Turner Prize in 1999. Over the last 25 years McQueen has created some of the most innovative works of moving image designed for gallery spaces, as well as four critically acclaimed films for cinematic release: “Hunger” (2008), “Shame” (2010), “12 Years a Slave” (2013) and “Widows” (2018). The visitors are able to view personal and intimate works such as McQueen’s earliest film shot on a Super 8 camera “Exodus” (1992-97) a one-minute-long Super 8 film following the movements of two men carrying potted palm trees through crowded London streets, which reflects on migration and multiculturalism in his home city of London, and “7th Nov. 2001″, in which the artist’s cousin Marcus recounts the tragic day he accidentally shot and fatally injured his own brother. These are joined by large-scale video installations such as “Western Deep” (2002) and “Static” (2009). Originally commissioned for documenta XI, “Western Deep” presents an intense, sensory exploration of the labor conditions of gold miners in South Africa, while “Static’s” aerial depiction of the Statue of Liberty visually scrutinises a familiar and heavily symbolic figure that can rarely be inspected up close. The film installation “Ashes” (2002-15),is  offering a moving tribute to the memory of a young fisherman the artist met and filmed in Grenada in 2002, who was killed by drug dealers the following year. “Ashes” is composed of two films projected simultaneously on either side of a free-hanging screen. First is a portrait of Ashes, a young man from Grenada from where the artist’s family also originated. Cracking a mischievous smile and taunting the camera, Ashes is seated at the prow of a boat sailing the Caribbean Sea. The footage was captured during the production of another work, entitled “Caribs’ Leap”. In contrast to the content of the first film, the second film projected on the other side of the screen was shot eight years later in a Grenada cemetery and domes in contrast to the idyllic postcard pictures of the Caribbean island. “Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life”, said McQueen. “We live with ghosts in our everyday”. McQueen’s “End Credits” (2012- ) is  a homage to the African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898–1976) who, after a successful career as a performer, was blacklisted in the 1950s and put under surveillance by the FBI. The work consists of rolling slides of the FBI’s reports on Robeson with a soundtrack of voices reading from the heavily-redacted documents. The exhibition also features “Weight” (2016), a sculpture first exhibited at the recently closed Reading Gaol, where Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned and wrote “De Profundis” (1897). Presenting a gold-plated mosquito net draped over one of the prison’s metal bed-frames to create a shimmering apparition, Weight explores the relation between protection and confinement, the physical and the spiritual, and the redemptive power of the imagination.

Info: Tate Modern, Bankside, London, Duration: 13/2-11/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-20:00, www.tate.org.uk