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
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