1. Tate Britain (Lukas Birk / Time Out)
    Lukas Birk / Time Out
  2. Martin Creed slow London (Ed Marshall / Time Out)
    Ed Marshall / Time Out
  3. Tate Britain (Britta Jaschinski / Time Out)
    Britta Jaschinski / Time Out
  4. Tate Britain exhibition (Tony Gibsom / Time Out)
    Tony Gibsom / Time Out
  5. Tate Britain exhibits
  • Art | Sculpture
  • Millbank
  • Recommended

Review

Tate Britain

5 out of 5 stars
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Time Out says

Tate Modern gets all the attention, but the original Tate Gallery, founded by sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, has a broader and more inclusive brief. Housed in a stately Portland stone building on the riverside, Tate Britain is second only to the National Gallery when it comes to British art. It’s also looking to steal back a bit of the limelight from its starrier sibling with a 20-year redevelopment plan called the Millbank Project: conserving the building’s original features, upgrading the galleries, opening new spaces to the public and adding a new café. The art here is exceptional. The historical collection includes work by Hogarth, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Constable (who gets three rooms) and Turner (in the superb Clore Gallery). Many contemporary works were shifted to the other Tate when it opened, but Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon are all well represented, and Art Now installations showcase up-and-coming British artists. Temporary exhibitions include headline-hungry blockbusters and the annual controversy-courting Turner Prize exhibition (September-January). The gallery has a good restaurant and an exemplary gift shop.

Details

Address
Millbank
London
SW1P 4RG
Transport:
Tube: Pimlico/Vauxhall
Price:
Free (permanent collection); admission charge applies for some temporary exhibitions
Opening hours:
Daily 10am-6pm (last admission for special exhibitions 5.15pm)
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What’s on

Alvaro Barrington: ‘Grace’

4 out of 5 stars

Alvaro Barrington is letting you in. He’s opening his arms, opening the doors to his childhood home, opening the windows into his memories.  To walk into the London-based artist’s Duveen commission is to walk into the Grenadian shack he grew up in. The sound of rain hammering on the tin roof echoes around the space as you sit on plastic-covered benches; you’re safe here, protected, just like Barrington felt as a kid with his grandmother. You’re brought into her home, her embrace. In the central gallery, a vast silver dancer is draped in fabrics on an enormous steel pan drum. This is Carnival, this is the Afro-Carribean diaspora at its freest, letting loose, dancing, expressing its soul, communing. You’re brought into the frenzy, the dance, the community. But the fun soon stops. The final space houses a dilapidated shop, built to the dimensions of an American prison cell, surrounded by chain link fencing. Its shutters creak open and slam shut automatically. This is a violent shock, a testimony to the dangers facing Black lives in the West: the police, the prison system, the barely concealed injustice.  After all the music and refuge of the rest of the installation, here, it’s like Barrington’s saying: ‘You want this? You want the carnival, the music, the culture? Then acknowledge the pain, the fear, the mistreatment, the subjugation too.’ I don’t think the paintings here are great, but painting’s not Barrington’s strong suit. He excels when he’s collaborating, sampling, sharin

The Turner Prize 2024

4 out of 5 stars

‘Know thyself’ it says in thick red letters on a wall at this year’s Turner Prize exhibition. Those words, a directive from Ancient Greek priestess Pythia, are a common thread running through all four artists’ work: this is art about the urge, the desperate need, to figure out who you are. Pio Abad comes first, with a display exploring colonial history, lost narratives of oppression and the role of museums in perpetuating both. Abad spent time in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, diving into the archive and store rooms for hidden stories. Here he combines objects from the collection with his own reactions to them. There's a bloody, violent watercolour from an 1897 expedition to Benin, a vast drawing of a deer hide, marking the first contact between Native Americans and British colonists, there are recreations of jewellery from the collection of kleptocrats Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, bladed weapons from Mindanao in the Philippines. Taken together, this acts as an archive of centuries of global upheaval, colonial violence and political unrest. But in trying to take in everything from Pocahontas to Benin to Tsarist jewellery to museum collections to contemporary conflicts, it ends up pretty unfocused and unclear, like eight different exhibitions happening at once. Glasgow-based Jasleen Kaur’s installation is a space for gathering. A huge carpet sits under a false ceiling littered with objects: bottles of Irn Bru, Scottish money, pamphlets for the Indian workers union of Glasgow. Symb

Ed Atkins

A career-spanning exhibition of video and animation artist Ed Atkins, in which visitors will be able to explore paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings, alongside the acclaimed artist’s moving image works.

Lee Miller

2025 will see the launch of the most extensive retrospective of Lee Miller’s photography in the UK, celebrating the trailblazing surrealist as one of the 20th century’s most urgent artistic voices. Around 250 vintage and modern prints will be on display – including some previously unseen gems – capturing the photographer’s vision and spirit.

Turner & Constable

This exhibition will put the work of two rivals – and two of Britain’s greatest painters – J.M.W. Turner and John Constable side by side. Although both had different paths to success, they each became recognised as stars of the art world and shared a connection to nature and recreating it in their landscape paintings. Explore the pair’s intertwined lives and legacies and get new insight into their creativity via sketchbooks, personal items and must-see artworks.

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