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A chalk drawing - a black background, with a large white sailboat drawn on it with chalk.

Tacita Dean

'The Sea, with a Ship; afterwards an Island'

4 September - 7 November 1999

Tacita Dean's work has often focused on the sea and its use as a backdrop to a variety of heroic adventures. Whether fictional, like Shakespeare's The Tempest, or factual, like the incredible and tragic story of yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst, the narratives Dean makes use of have in common a kind of timelessness. Despite the vast range of tracking systems and charting devices available to the contemporary sea-farer, the open sea still prompts a sense of mystery and wonder. 'the human attempt to contain the unbounded' (Maria Walsh in Art Monthly)

Fascinated by Crowhurst's story, where he lost all sense of place and time while adrift alone on the Atlantic, Tacita Dean has made works in a variety of media which ironically contrast the bold heroicism of such sea-faring adventures with the fragilty of the ways in which they are depicted. Her images, whether drawn or filmed, set up imagined scenarios as the back drops for some dramatic action, only to be instantly undermined by the spoken or written texts which accompany them. The words just visible in the area of sea beneath the galleon - 'It is the mercy' - were words written by Crowhurst as one of his last entries in his log book before he died at sea.

Both films and drawings have a relationship to time. A previous series of seven drawings, entitled ‘?' was made in response to the shipping forecasts over a period of seven days.

Dean's chalk drawings are able to be erased or altered at any time. Often they bear the traces of the artist's alterations or erasures, while the words which are scattered across the images imply that there is more to the final image. The notes suggest a narratives of which the images we see are only part. 

As well as these drawings, you can see a short film by Tacita Dean in Dundee Contemporary Arts Cinema. The film, entitled 'The Structure of Ice' (1997) is 3 minuntes long and cobines colour film footage of a scientific model with a narrative written by the artist. Similarly to the drawings, 'The Structure of Ice' combines images with a text which somehow does not match what we see.

 

 

Tacita Dean: Exhibition Notes

Click here to download the Exhibition Notes for Tacita Dean: 'The Sea, with a Ship; afterwards an Island'
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Exhibition images

Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with large, curved shapes on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Three large black canvases hang on DCA's white galleries walls. The black canvases have white marks on them with chalk.
A chalk drawing - a black background, with a large white sailboat drawn on it with chalk.
DCA Galleries seen from the outside - silver lettering above the door says 'Galleries', and on the inside we can see a large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk.
A black canvas with blurry white chalk on it. There are also nautical words written on it with chalk - shore, afterwards, equator.
Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with large, curved shapes on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Three large black canvases hang on DCA's white galleries walls. The black canvases have white marks on them with chalk.
A chalk drawing - a black background, with a large white sailboat drawn on it with chalk.
DCA Galleries seen from the outside - silver lettering above the door says 'Galleries', and on the inside we can see a large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk.
A black canvas with blurry white chalk on it. There are also nautical words written on it with chalk - shore, afterwards, equator.
Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Tacita Dean's exhibition in DCA Galleries. A large black canvas with large, curved shapes on it in chalk hangs on the white gallery walls.
Three large black canvases hang on DCA's white galleries walls. The black canvases have white marks on them with chalk.
A chalk drawing - a black background, with a large white sailboat drawn on it with chalk.
DCA Galleries seen from the outside - silver lettering above the door says 'Galleries', and on the inside we can see a large black canvas with a white sailboat drawn on it in chalk.
A black canvas with blurry white chalk on it. There are also nautical words written on it with chalk - shore, afterwards, equator.