Rineke Dijkstra: I See a Woman Crying
26 April – 30 August 2010
Tate Liverpool, Wolfson Gallery
Admission Free
In April 2010 Tate Liverpool is proud to unveil new commissions by acclaimed Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. Rineke Dijkstra: I See a Woman Crying features two Liverpool-based video works never seen before in the UK.
The works were borne out of the artist’s residence at Tate Liverpool during the European Capital of Culture 2008 exhibition The Fifth Floor: Ideas Taking Space; a groundbreaking project inspired by ideas and proposals from people across the city. Through collaborating directly with Tate Liverpool’s audiences, Dijkstra’s residence saw her working with groups of school children from across the region, after being inspired by the ways that Tate Liverpool staff encourage children to interact with art. During The Fifth Floor a studio was built in the gallery and the artist documented school children interpreting Picasso’s iconic painting Weeping Woman (1937), currently on display as part of the free exhibition DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture.
Dijkstra has had a long and fruitful relationship with Liverpool, using its residents as sitters for her photography and video works for over 15 years. She explains that she is drawn to the culture of storytelling and the unwavering friendliness of the people of the city. Her first video work, Buzzclub, Liverpool (1996), features teenagers dancing to a soundtrack of 90’s acid house and rave in a studio erected in a Liverpool nightclub, in an intimate and revealing snapshot of urban youth identity. Focusing on adolescents, young adults and people in a transitional stage of life, Dijkstra’s portraits aim to capture ‘uninhibited moments’. By using pared down, reduced backgrounds she produces striking and beautifully rendered works which slowly unravel personalities, heighten emotional responses and emphasise the psychology of her subjects.
The newly commissioned video portrait The Weeping Woman, Tate Liverpool signals a new direction for Dijkstra, as she introduces dialogue and text into her work for the first time. Ruth Drawing Picasso, Tate Liverpool, the second work in the exhibition, is a subtle study of a quiet, observational response to Picasso’s painting.
Rineke Dijkstra was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1984 at de Moor in Amsterdam. Dijsktra’s work has appeared in numerous international exhibitions, including the 1997 and 2001 Venice Biennale and the 2003 International Center for Photography’s Triennial of Photography and Video in New York. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Werner Mantz Award (1994) and the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (1998).
The artist’s new videos and Liverpool-based portraits will be featured in Liverpool, an exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, from 20 February – 27 March 2010. In 2012 a retrospective exhibition of Dijkstra is scheduled at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).