Tacita Dean

British artist Tacita Dean is fascinated by the ephemeral nature of places, people, things and ideas. Her oeuvre – which varies from analogue film and photogravures to monumental charcoal drawings and sound installations – invites meditative reflection and offers a counterpoint to our increasingly frenetic world. She prompts the viewer to pause and consider the fragility of existence and what it means to be present in an ever-changing environment.

Dean, who claims to have grown up with an 8 mm camera in her hand, intentionally chooses materials and methods that are in danger of being forgotten. Partly in response to the emergence of digital techniques, she investigates the characteristics that make physical film unique. She explores the magic of analogue images and (with a nod to filmmaking) develops new narratives and associative possibilities.

Random chance is a guiding principle of Dean’s artistic method, see Girl Stowaway. Driven by a strong belief in the subconscious as a creative force, she allows circumstances and accidents to partly determine the end result of a piece. The artist also prefers to work with humble materials like charcoal, demonstrating how something ordinary can be used to create something monumental – and how great things can be achieved through small means.

Her films are slow, contemplative observations of phenomena on the cusp of disappearance: from glaciers calving and millennia-old trees, see Crowhurst II to indirect portraits of writers such as W.G. Sebald, see Michael Hamburger. Whether she is capturing the subtle light effects of a sunset or reconstructing the story of a lost mariner, each of her works reflects a profound interest in time and history, as well as a fascination with the liminal spaces between land and sea, day and night, visible and invisible, on the verge of a dramatic moment, see The Russian Ending. Time after time, Dean manages to capture transient phenomena in her imagery and to make the poetry and beauty of the ephemeral visible.