Tacita Dean

Tate Britain, London
Through May 6

A beautiful retro-futuristic relic, the Bubble House was built in the ’70s to withstand hurricane conditions on the tropical beach of Cayman Brac. Tan-colored, shaped like a rugby ball, punctured by multiple portholes, and slowly rotting, it is the star of Tacita Dean's eponymous 16mm color film. Her camera pans over it like a sightless figure feeling its way over an unfamiliar surface. This tentativeness is the film's hook: Dean is fascinated by mankind's relationship with the elements, but she rarely makes the mistake of trying to “explain” it; rather, she is a curator of lostness and the largest mortal mysteries.

A recurrent motif in her work is the notion of being lost at sea. In Teignmouth Electron Dean's lens similarly caresses the beached boat of Donald Crowhurst, who became mentally unbalanced and disappeared during the Golden Globe boat race of 1968. Also inspired by Crowhurst is Disappearance at Sea. Filmed from inside an English lighthouse during a sunset, this shifts slowly over 14 minutes from disorienting and near-abstract views of the rotating bulbs to the refulgent sundown itself, and, finally, to the melancholy sight of the lighthouse's beam tracking over the vast and empty ocean, its glow bouncing forlornly off the black waves.

Circularity, and an almost archeologically slow sense of time, characterize many of Dean's works. Fernsehturm, set in a revolving restaurant in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, is a 45-minute film shot in Cinemascope format and again structured around a sunset. For the diners this event is the highpoint of the evening. As the restaurant turns, giving everyone a view of the fiery, descending orb, they point, stare, rise from their seats; do everything, it seems, but concentrate on their meals. A curiously primitive sight, like man discovering fire anew, it reminds us that certain aspects of the quotidian cannot be encompassed. This is exemplary and idiosyncratic work.

Dean's films are, however, plainly unsuited to the venue. In an ironic instance of reflexivity, these glacially quiet meditations on human lostness are themselves in danger of being lost. The spaciousness of the gallery allows for the inclusion of more of Dean's work than is manageable, and encourages one to move quickly through the show. As a result, the magical effect of her films risks falling victim to the entropic anonymity and pace of the modern museum.




Martin Herbert