BANKSIDE wall cuts
Bankside Power Station (Tate Modern) 1996
BANKSIDE POWER STATION RE IMAGINED AS A GALLERY OF MODERN ART
In April 1994 the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. The £134 million conversion started in June 1995 with the removal of the remaining redundant plant. The conversion work was completed in January 2000.
In 1996 along with five other artists I was invited to record this transformation, while others drew and photographed the site, I decided that my response was to reimagine what the building could become.
I negotiated to have the keys to the building and for over three months and set about my work. Removing doors to re-purpose as tables, I made studios on three floors, of what would become the administration block.
I began a series of wall cuts into the fabric of the building, which had some connection to art works that had been influential to my development as an artist.
Some had obvious visual connections with works like Target, Jasper Johns, Stare (Lawerence Weiner), Others were more oblique like the proposition Three Sided Square, (Micheal Craig-Martin) Some pieces responded to the building and where it is located,for example the River Thames and Boat and others like Door to previous work.
I had a previous connection with the Power Station, my uncle Arthur worked there as an electrician.
I made nine works. There was a series of tours for invited guests to see the progress of the Tate refurbishment and two of them included viewing my works.
IN 1996 I WAS GRANTED UNPRECEDENTED ACCESS TO THE FORMER BANKSIDE POWER STATION AS IT WAS BEING TRANSFORMED INTO TATE MODERN.
Inside Bankside
In 1996 The Tate invited a number of artist to respond to the building during its transformation from a Power Station to Tate Modern.
The building was being emptied and the redevelopment began the transformation into Tate Modern. The finished works would form part of an exhibition of artists who were commissioned to make paintings, drawings and photographs. These were Dennis Creffield, Anthony Eyton, Deanna Petherbridge, Terry Smith, Thomas Struth, Catherine Yass. The subsequent exhibition was called Inside Bankside at the South London Gallery
I left the building and simply abandoned the work and most of the works on paper. Its the first and last time I left all my drawings behind.
This work was semi secret and probably there are few people left now at the Tate who were there at that time. The Tate opened in 2000 but the cuts remained as part of a hidden history of the building, preserved within the walls.
DOOR
This was the second in a series of doors that I have re-made in different locations, the first was in the Museo De Bellas Artes in Caracas made in 1995 and is still in-situ, one of only two works that survive from that period. The others, below made at Tate Modern in 1996 and then in 1997 in Darmstadt in Germany.
SHIP
The was a small drawing I found in the space on a column. Drawn I suspect by a builder trying to explain to someone else something about a boat they had seen or perhaps imagined. I copied the drawing, enlarged it and turned it around to that it faced the Thames.
THREE SIDED SQUARE
I liked the idea of a an oddball or improbable shape. Giving something the wrong name seems to draw into doubt what constitutes a square. A big influence was Michael Craig-Martin’s The Oak Tree
STARE
I played with the pun of stair. but the work was relating to actual physical space but I could not resist playing with what the building would become. So all the work references the building and art works that were soon to be housed there.
LADDER PARALLAX
I found this rather short stumpy ladder that was actually about my height, I found myself strangely attracted to it. I placed it next to me during various wall cuts. Its seemed to short to actually be of any use at all. Eventually I found this corridor and I had this idea to make a companion to the ladder. I noticed that has you passed the ladder in the narrow corridor the view point changed this was evident in the shadow. So the small ladder looks from one position in the same angle relative to the real ladder but from a different viewpoint - out of sync. For some reason this amused me.
TARGET
One of the major influences is the work of Jasper Johns. I really found the Flag and Target painting interesting. Because he took the given of a flag and a target which enabled him to act upon it. This idea of accepting a given is central to all my work. In homage to Johns I called this work Target.
VIEW
This was made on the only viewing platform that enabled the odd visitor to look at the progress of the building project. I cut the word in the wall facing the view, to read the word was to turn your back on the view. Photograph Richard Wentworth
WALL
It was different from three sided square as this work describes the surface in which the word is carved.
Parallax 1996 / 2024
Above original cut out made in 1996 and below the reworking sketch for multiscreen video projections 2023
