Steve McQueen: Year 3 – A Portrait of London


Delightful exhibition at Tate Britain by Steve McQueen of 76,000 7 and 8 year old London school children.

I loved this exhibition which was much better than I expected. I’d read about it and thought it might be a bit twee and was skeptical of how it would work as an exhibition. However the sheer scale of it was stunning as the small pictures, all about A4 in size, took over the large Duveen Gallery. The fact that the pictures were hung in school groups set up a rhythm like a geometric abstract picture as it created small banks of colour.

The work also worked on the small scale as each picture showed a group of eager faces grouped around their teacher and with any teaching assistants at the side. They have caught a moment in time in those children’s live which McQueen saw as a significant moment when they become conscious of things outside their family. You can’t help but question what direction their lived will take. I would love to see the classes brought back together in 20 years to see how they have changed.

The work was brought to life later in the morning as school groups started to arrive to see themselves and you realised the work had the added element of actually being a moment in the children’s lives. A whole infrastructure had been put in place at the back of the gallery to accommodate them. They came in class by class with their teachers and a guide. I loved the guide who got her group chanting “We are here”. Hopefully a moment they will remember.

I read an excellent article on how the show had been done and the teams who went out to take the photos and how they made sure all the pictures were to the same scale with the camera the same distance for the children yet working for all sizes of class. The whole show was much cleverer that I had at first imagined.

Closes 3 May  2020

Review 
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