Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean (born 1965) is an English visual artist.

Introduction

Tacita Dean is best known for her work in 16mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. Her anamorphic films are shot by cinematographers [http://www.adderley.net John Adderley] and [http://www.jamiecairney.com Jamie Cairney] . She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as 'asides,' which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks.

Especially during the 1990s, the sea was a persistent theme in Dean's work. Perhaps most famously, she explored the tragic maritime misadventures of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur English sailor whose ambition to enter a race to solo circumnavigate the globe ended in deception, existential crisis and, eventually, tragedy [ [http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.20823 Tacita Dean: Disappearance at Sea] from the National Maritime Museum] . Dean has made a number of films and blackboard drawings relating to the Crowhurst story, exploiting the metaphorical richness of such motifs as the ocean, lighthouses and shipwrecks.

Since moving to Berlin in 2000, Dean has devoted more attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany. She has made films of such iconic structure as the Berliner Fernsehturm and the Palast der Republik. Recent projects have concerned important figures in post-war German cultural history, such as W.G Sebald and Joseph Beuys. She continues to live and work in Berlin.

Biography

Dean was born in Canterbury in 1965. She was educated at Kent College, Canterbury. Her brother is Ptolemy Dean, the architect. She studied at Falmouth School of Art, graduating in 1988. From 1990-2, Dean studied for a Masters degree at the Slade School of Fine Art. Dean held her first solo exhibition "The Martyrdom of St Agatha and Other Stories", at Galerija Skuc, Maribor, Slovenia. Since then, her rise to prominence on the national and international scene has been prodigious. She exhibited widely throughout the 1990s and, following her 1996 film "Disappearance at Sea" was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998. In 2001 she was given a solo show at Tate Britain. In 2000 Dean was awarded a one-year German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to Berlin, where she continues to live and work. 2006 saw the most comprehensive retrospective of her work to date, ‘Analogue', held at Schaulager Basel. [See the accompanying catalogue: Theodora Vischer and Isabel Friedli (eds.): Tacita Dean, Analogue, Drawings 1991-2006]

Some of her solo exhibitions include:

*Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1997);
*Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, with US tour (1998);
*Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2000),
*MACBA, Barcelona (2001);
*Tate St Ives (2005).
* [http://schaulager.org Schaulager, Basel] Tacita Dean. Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991-2006 (2006)
* [http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/hugo_boss_2006/index.html Guggenheim Museum [The Hugo Boss prize 2006] Tacita Dean 23 February - 6 June (2007)

Dean has also undertaken commissions for London's defunct Millennium Dome, the Sadler's Wells Theatre, and for Cork, Ireland, as part of that city's European City of Culture celebrations. She has also completed residencies at the Sundance Institute, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, U.S., and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Berlin

Filmography

* The Story of Beard, 1992
* The Martyrdom of St Agatha (in several parts), 1994
* Girl Stowaway, 1994
* How to Put a Boat in a Bottle, 1995
* A Bag of Air, 1995
* Disappearance at Sea, 1996
* Delft Hydraulics, 1996
* Foley Artist, 1996
* Disappearance at Sea II, 1997
* The Structure of Ice, 1997
* Gellért, 1998
* Bubble House, 1999
* Sound Mirrors, 1999
* From Columbus, Ohio, to the Partially Buried Woodshed, 1999
* Banewl, 1999
* Teignmouth Electron, 2000
* Totality, 2000
* Fernsehturm, 2001
* Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers), 2002
* Palast, 2004
* Kodak, 2006
* Darmstädter Werkblock, 2007

References

* [http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/dean.html Frith Street Gallery, London]
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/tacitadean/biog.htm Tacita Dean: Recent films and other works] - Past exhibition at Tate Britain

Recommended reading

* Barcelona 2001: "Tacita Dean". Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Actar.
* Godfrey, M.: ‘Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean’s Floh,’ "October" vol.114, Fall 2005, 90-119.
* Royoux, J-C. et.al.: "Tacita Dean". London: Phaidon, 2006.
* Trodd, T.: ‘Film at the End of the Twentieth Century: Obsolescence and Medium in the Work of Tacita Dean,’ "Object" 6, 2003/4.
* Vischer, T. and Friedli, I.: "Tacita Dean. Analogue: Drawings 1991-2006". Basel: Schaulager, 2006.

ee also

*Ptolemy Dean, brother [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19981101/ai_n14188113/pg_2>] to Tacita Dean.
*Book Works, publisher.

External links

* [http://www.tate.org.uk/stives/exhibitions/dean/ Tacita Dean] exhibition at Tate St Ives, UK, 2005
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2675 Tacita Dean in the Tate Collection] - artist biography and works viewable online
* [http://www.artnet.com/artwork/150685/tacita-dean-aerial-view-of-teignmouth-electron-cayman-brac-16th-september-1998.html Tacita Dean - Aerial View of Teignmouth Electron, Cayman Brac. 16 September 1998]
* [http://www.waterlog.fvu.co.uk Waterlog] exhibition featuring recent work "Michael Hamburger" 2007