Bob and Roberta Smith: Thamesmead Codex

Striking installation at Tate Modern by Bob and Roberta Smith.

I’d made a special point of going to see this display as I live quite close to Thamesmead , a modernist large-scale housing project built in the late 1960s. Based on interviews with residents in 2019-20 it documents the histories and identities of Thamesmead and its communities. It records memories from the past and hopes for a post-Covid future.

Alongside the text on this huge billboard are bright landscapes of the area to represent the illuminated pages of a medieval book or codex.

I loved the placing of the work at one end of the bridge between the two buildings of the gallery so that you could see it from a distance and it gave sense of being in an urban space.

Closes 7 May 2023


 

 

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