Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean is a British visual artist whose works encompass photography, films, and drawings focusing on concepts of narrative, time, and chance. Frequently incorporating marine motifs and abandoned environments, her creations establish links between the past and the present, as well as fact and fiction. Her art goes beyond the objective portrayal of the physical world and delves into our personal, inner worlds, while exploring the intricate interplay between them.

Born in Canterbury in 1965, Dean studied at Falmouth School of Art before receiving a BA Honours degree from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1992. Dean’s early works focused on drawing, particularly on landscapes and everyday objects. Her style later evolved to incorporate a range of media including film, photography, sound and installation. She has cited artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Agnes Martin as important influences on her work.

Dean’s work was featured in the 1995 ‘General Release: Young British Artists’ exhibition at the XLVI Venice Biennale. While she was considered a ‘key name’ of the Young British Artists, her work diverged from the prominent YBA members such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin due to its more lyrical, introspective qualities.

Dean is known for her work in 16 mm film, which often employs long takes and steady camera angles and are accompanied by understated soundtracks. In 1996 she created the seminal ‘Disappearance at Sea’, a fourteen-minute film composed of seven static camera shots that alternate between close-ups of a working lighthouse and footage of the sea, all shown on a loop. This project was inspired by her persistent interest in the sea, and in particular in the maritime misadventures of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor whose travels ended in tragedy. In 1997, Dean also made an audio work based on the futile effort to find the submerged artwork ‘Spiral Jetty’ by Robert Smithson.

In 2001, a major solo show was held at Tate Britain, titled ‘Tacita Dean: Recent films and Other Works’, which included texts written by the artist herself.

Dean has also devoted attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany and has captured important artists and thinkers of the last fifty years in her recent films. Her film ‘JG’, exhibited in 2013, returns to her fascination with ‘Spiral Jetty’ and her friendship with science fiction writer J.G. Ballard. Another significant work is FILM’ (2011), which explores the artifice of cinema, the nature of film as a medium and its relationship to memory and the passage of time.

By playing with spatial and temporal dislocations, her mesmerising artworks superimpose real landscapes with the individual’s inner world, revealing the influence of their obsessions and desires. Dean was selected as an artist in residence at the Getty Research Institute in 2014 and is also a founding member of savefilm.org, actively campaigning for the preservation of the film medium.

Dean has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at major institutions such as Tate Britain, the New Museum in New York and the Royal Academy of Arts in

London. She has also participated in group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and documenta in Kassel, Germany. Dean’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and honours, including the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, the Kurt Schwitters Prize in 2009, and the 2019 Cherry Kearton Medal and Award.