Tate

Jake and Dinos Chapman
When Humans Walked the Earth 2006
View of this exhibition at Tate Britain
Photo © Tate 2006

Bromdinium popped into the Tate Britain at during the Long Wet Weekend to check out the 'How We Are: Photographing Britain' along with the rest of the city, going by the queues to get in (friendly cloakroom staff, btw, and always kind enough to park the Brompton, unlike the National Gallery, which is off limits to the Fold).

A good show, with good use of IT, for once (digitized photobooks with touch sensitive pages, plasma screen scans of photobooks/slides). An odd hanging of one or two shots (the giants pictures of marines were oddly placed, for example); great 1960s photobooks and colour illustrations, esp. the cookbooks. The usual reflections on the limited palette of photography: ironic juxtaposition, Martin Parr satire/reverse snobbery, earnest reportage, class slumming, the colonial gaze...

More weird was the Chapman bros. bronze installation, which was very amusing in a sixth-form way. However, the family using the art boxes with their three children in the room with brains being smashed up, penises being chopped, and vaginas impalled: what was up with that? Was the parents making a point? Did you not notice the chopped willies? Did the children not notice? Had I wandered into Private Eye's 'It's Grim Up North (London)' cartoon by mistake?

"When Humans Walked the Earth 2007 contests the distinctions we make
between man and machine and assumptions about historical progress. Cast in the
traditional medium of bronze, these objects evoke the heroic tradition of
monumental sculpture. However their scatological imagery, subversive intent and
complex associations suggest a sense of impending collapse..."