PDP - Keywords at the Tate

The Keywords exhibition at Tate Liverpool tied in nicely with what we’re currently doing in context, so Gary had us all bussed down to see it. And they’re charging a pretty penny to see it too, £8 for civilians, though we got in for £5.

And…it wasn’t worth it.

Raymond Williams’ book Keywords  is a collection of essays on the changing meaning and usage of 130 words. The Tate has taken this concept and twisted it to frame a collection of artwork and images from the 1980’s. Words scrawled large on the wall –

Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

- were represented by pictures on the facing wall. You would assume these artworks would be logically placed opposite their keyword; but no, the artwork is crammed shoulder to shoulder along, while the keywords sprawl in a leisurely manner. The result is the near impossibility of equating the one with the other.

Maybe just as well, because the artworks don’t really fit the categories. There was a painting of an oak tree. Where was that supposed to go? I’d have had to put it under folk. But no, folk means, apparently, the troubles in Northern Ireland. Whereas to most people folk means nasal singing and morris dancing.

Another room held more stuff scattered across large black carpets, which we weren’t allowed to stand on. Again, keywords were scrawled on the walls, but I had no idea what they pertained to.

The Tate management had decided to use the Keyword concept as an excuse to haul out a bunch of artworks they already owned and charge us loads of money to see them

Yet if we hadn’t been working on this topic, been familiar with the book and its concept, I might have been fooled into thinking the exhibition made sense, and that I was too uneducated to get it. As it was, I just saw it as nonsense.