3 minute read
Art
Tate St Ives: March and August and other Vietnamese tales
March and August were a brother and a sister who were separated during the Vietnamese famine of 1945-6. March searched everywhere for his sister – but August had become a hungry ghost, unable to communicate with him.
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The siblings are the central characters in Mute Grain, a film by Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan about the famine, which took place during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, and is estimated to have cost two million lives. Their names – Ba and Tám in Vietnamese – represent the poorest months of the lunar calendar, when farmers traditionally had to borrow money and had to find extra jobs away from their farms to sustain themselves.
The film can be seen at Tate St Ives, as part of Phan’s most extensive UK exhibition to date. Phan is internationally renowned for her poetic, multi-layered artworks which explore the historical and ecological issues facing her homeland, while addressing broader ideas around tradition, ideology, ritual and environmental change.
The exhibition at the Tate brings together a selection of Phan’s videos, paintings and sculptures from the past five years, alongside new work. This includes First Rain, Brise Soleil, a multi-channel film about “the beauty and suffering” of the Mekong River, which runs through Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia before meeting the sea on the coast of Vietnam.
Also part of the exhibition is Becoming Alluvium, Phan’s 2019 video, which explores the environmental and social changes caused to the Mekong and the people who live close to it by the expansion of farming, overfishing, dam construction and the looted heritage as an aftermath of
Voyages De Rhodes. Courtesy of Thao Nguyen Phan, Photo © Tate (Sam Day) colonialism. The video is being shown with Perpetual Brightness, a screen made using traditional Vietnamese silk and lacquer painting techniques composed of paintings depicting imaginary stories of the Mekong and its human and non-human inhabitants. March and August are featured again in a series of suspended watercolour paintings on silk. The paintings, collectively titled Dream of March and August, are displayed in pairs to suggest that although they occupy the same space, they are in different physical and metaphorical planes – just as March and August search endlessly for each other across this life and the next.
Tate St Ives’s exhibition space has been transformed by an installation of hanging jute stalks, which divide the films from the static works, and through which visitors can move. Titled No Jute Cloth for the Bones, it references the destruction of food crops during the Japanese occupation, so that jute – a cheap material used in building – could be grown instead. This organic, interactive installation is dedicated to lives lost through the tragedies of war and famine.
The exhibition runs until 2nd May. For more information visit tate.org.uk/stives or follow @TateStIves #ThaoNguyenPhan
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136. ARTIST ROOMS, Tate and National Galleries of Scotland © The estate of Sol LeWitt. Photo by Joe Humphrys © Tate.
What’s on
Tate St Ives
Thao Nyguen Phan Until 2 May
Thao Nguyen Phan is internationally renowned for her poetic, multi-layered artworks which explore the historical and ecological issues facing her homeland Vietnam, and consider universal ideas of tradition, ideology, ritual and environmental change. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-st-ives/exhibition/thaonguyen-phan
Super Sunday Sunday 20 March, 11.00–15.00
£1 admission and free for children Get creative, investigate art, be messy, play with ideas and explore the galleries at our Super Sunday family festival.
The Last Weekend – Thao Nguyen Phan Sat 30 April, Sun 1 May, Mon 2 May
A special gallery wide event celebrating regional connections to the current exhibition and the collection displays. Rita Evans will showcase her new performance work, 'Stringing the Matrix'.
Sol LeWitt at Tate St Ives
Have you seen our colourful paint installation by American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt?
This lively acrylic paint installation has been adapted to work with the architecture of our sea-facing gallery. See it now in this special space overlooking St Ives bay! https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-st-ives/display/artist-rooms-sol-lewitt
Tate Create Mon 4 – Sun 24 April, 10.00–16.00
Come play this Easter! Get creative, have fun and join in activities inspired by the amazing artwork in our exhibitions. Get your £5 Locals’ Pass!
