Latest news with #TateModern
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I was censored for a long time': the woman who photographed Chile's sex workers and dissidents
When the Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz showed her first photobook to a well-known society photographer of the day, he told her 'look, a housewife will never be a photographer'. 'That's what he said!' she laughs. 'Imagine … that was my beginning.' Today, aged 81, her work documenting life on the fringes of Chilean society sits in the collections of Tate Modern and MoMA in New York and in 2015 she represented Chile at the Venice Biennale. Between 1982 and 1987, Errázuriz spent time photographing life in the brothels of Santiago, as trans sex workers fixed their hair, shifted their stockings, refined their makeup and killed time waiting for male clients. It was, she says, a 'beautiful' experience. 'We talked or we'd have a glass of wine or a coffee. They trusted me.' Such was her empathetic bond with her subjects, that she even developed a friendship with the mother of two brothers working in one of the brothels. 'I dedicated the series to her.' She titled the project Adam's Apple, and it characterised a career defined by an enduring love of outsiders. Works from the series can now be seen in her first major solo UK exhibition, Paz Errázuriz: Dare to Look – Hidden Realities of Chile at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. Other subjects of the 171 photographs on show include psychiatric patients, circus performers, boxers, political activists and the homeless, highlighting the humanity of those living under duress during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Talking to me over Zoom from her home in Santiago, Errázuriz admits to being nervous about the interview. But she remains an energising presence, even on screen: a huge smile and rippling laugh, spiky hair, she beams through my laptop like a grandmotherly punk. 'My idea is not to shock,' she states. But shock she did. 'I was censored for such a long time. For instance, there was a small group exhibition at a museum during the dictatorship and my photograph was taken out. It was a reflection of a naked man in a mirror.' It was artistic, she laughs again, not obscene. 'You couldn't see anything specific.' Errázuriz was born in Santiago in 1944. Her father, a lawyer, was both strict and traditional. 'I never got along with him. He didn't accept that I studied art when I finished school, so I resented that,' she recalls. A childhood snap taken during her first communion made an impression about photography's importance as a record. Her head was partly out of the frame. 'I was frustrated because friends had very formal photographs. It seemed very unfair.' She trained as a primary school teacher, studying for a time at the Cambridge Institute of Education in the UK. While teaching in Santiago she began taking pictures, initially of children. 'I enjoyed that very much because they didn't see me. They forgot about the photographer,' she recalls. That project led to her first photobook in 1973 – Amalia, Diary of a Chicken – in which she depicted a household seen through the bird's shin-high perspective. She was encouraged in her early work by the book's editor, Isabel Allende, later the bestselling author of The House of the Spirits and a niece of Salvador Allende, Chile's president during the early 1970s. 'I didn't know other photographers. I never had the chance to see photobooks in those days. I'm self-taught.' But everything changed on 11 September 1973 when General Pinochet took power in a coup that saw the country's air force bomb its own presidential palace. When Pinochet's troops stormed the building, President Allende was found dead, lying next to his rifle. Isabel Allende went into exile. Errázuriz stayed. But the coup ended her teaching career; the junta considered her 'inappropriate' for the classroom. Photography and family life took its place. She married and had two children. Meanwhile, she began photographing Chileans living on the margins of society, embracing an informal social documentary style with a humanist sensibility. 'Little by little, I became more active.' In 1981 she co-founded Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes, which provided credentials and a membership card as she wielded her camera around town. She went on to photograph vagrants sleeping rough, elderly nudes, riot police, tango dancers, wrestlers, acrobats, dissidents and endangered ethnic groups. All are treated with respect. Errázuriz compares looking at her old work to flicking through a diary. 'It was analogue photography and so you had negatives and you made contact sheets. Film here was very difficult to find, very expensive. You had one roll of film, 36 shots, and when that contact sheet appeared there were so many things on it,' she explains. 'The first six strips were of the protests in the street, where the military is doing this or that. Then came the photography of my son, a baby, and then at the end of the sheet is my grandmother's birthday.' In the 1980s, Errázuriz volunteered at a charitable centre for people affected by Aids. The crisis decimated the community of sex workers she had photographed. 'So many people died. From my project all of them except one,' she says, adding that she remains close to that survivor. 'For the past 10 years, the first call I receive in the new year is from him.' The dictatorship was mercurial, she recalls. In 1987 she began documenting the city's boxing community. 'That, I thought was innocuous,' she says. 'But when I went to the place where they trained, they said: 'Oh no, you cannot come in because women are not allowed here.'' She won them over with 'imaginative arguments'. The last time she showed in the UK it was alongside other international luminaries such as Bruce Davidson, Diane Arbus and Larry Clark in the group show Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins at the Barbican in London. She is thrilled to be back in Britain, a nation of which she is fond, not least because, when Pinochet was placed under house arrest in a Surrey country club in 1998 on charges of human rights violations, 'everyone realised, seriously, what he had done because England is such an authority,' she says. 'That was the real fall of a dictator.' He told Chileans he'd be home for Christmas but was held for 16 months before, notoriously, the then homesecretary Jack Straw released him on the grounds that he was too ill to stand trial. Errázuriz is still photographing (albeit on her smartphone, as carrying a camera on the streets of Santiago would be a magnet for muggers). There is widespread poverty, crime and yet more protests, she says, and she is not, perhaps, as primed for the latter as she once was. 'You have to run fast. The teargas hurts so much, I discovered that the gas today is totally different to the one 40 years ago.' Does she think Chile is a better place today than it was half a century ago? 'We got rid of the dictatorship. That was the main thing we've done. That's really important,' she says. 'But it's difficult in Chile, really. It's not exactly what we dreamed of.' When I ask if she still gets pleasure from photographing its people, 'Sí,' she says and her face lights up. 'When I choose who I'm going to photograph, it's because, somehow, I like that person. I reflect myself in them. I learn from them.' Paz Errázuriz: Dare to Look – Hidden Realities of Chile is at MK Gallery from 19 July to 5 October
BBC News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Founder wants UK Aids quilt to be brought home to Edinburgh
The man behind a memorial quilt which was created to remember people who died from HIV and Aids wants to bring it back to Scotland more than 30 years Ally van Tillo took charge of the UK-wide project in Edinburgh in the early days of the Aids epidemic in the late helped set up the Names Project UK after seeing the US version of the memorial and gathered contributions from people across the country who had lost loved ones to the virus. The quilt was recently brought out of storage for an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, attracting 70,000 visitors. Now Ally wants it to go on display in Scotland. The quilt is made up of 6ft by 3ft panels of fabric. Each one is created in memory of someone who died from Aids. The massive artwork is seen as a unique document of social history, representing 384 people from all around the UK. It is designed to remind people how far the fight against HIV has come – and how the virus no longer stops people living long and healthy Van Tillo said it was just as important for people to see it and understand its meaning today as it was when it was first told BBC Scotland News: "In total there are 42 twelve foot by twelve foot panels, each comprising up to eight smaller panels. "Lives remembered include those of the writer Bruce Chatwin, actors Ian Charleson and Denham Elliot, gay rights activist Mark Ashton and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe."In addition, emotive testimonials, photos, and personal documents that tell the story behind the panel accompany many of the quilt panels." The original quilt project started in America in the 1980s, and it inspired Mr Van Tillo, formerly known as Alasdair Hume."It was in Edinburgh for an exhibition," he said. "It had come over from San Francisco during the festival."And I was thinking, why don't we have one here?"He found the beginnings of a similar project based in Bournemouth and met the offered to look after the project, and it Lanigan works with Aids Quilt UK, the charity which currently looks after the said there had been a stigma around Aids in the 1980s."Sometimes people couldn't be buried," she said."Funeral directors wouldn't accept the bodies of people who had died with Aids."Many families rejected their family members and would have nothing to do with them." She said the quilt was a memorial to the people who had died, a campaigning tool and a protest about the fact that the deaths were happening."Society didn't seem to be taking it seriously in terms of finding a vaccine, finding the medications that were needed, doing the work that was needed," she panel size was chosen to represent a typical grave plot. The sections would be made by family, friends, lovers, partners, cousins, uncles, aunts - anyone who had cared for the person who had died and who wanted to celebrate and commemorate their were sewn in that were very personal to the person being remembered, like a ring or a cassette panels were sent to Edinburgh where they were sewn into blocks of eight panels, creating a 12ft by 12ft fabric the success of the Tate exhibition, Ally is keen to see the quilt in Scotland again."To see it back in Edinburgh or Scotland just being shown would be brilliant," he said."Especially to myself and my husband Ian, I think it would mean rather a lot."He added: "We cannot forget, because it's through forgetting that we're seeing all these rights being taken away from people again."Ms Lanigan is similarly enthusiastic."There are still people all over the world who are dying as a result of HIV," she said."So the quilt is a very powerful reminder that we still need to do the work to end that. We haven't got a vaccine. We haven't got a cure."Scotland is our next goal. We would love to see the quilt back in Scotland where it was created."We want people to be able to see it without having to pay to see it, because again, that was part of its purpose, that people should be able to see it."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Calls for Aids quilt to be brought home to Edinburgh
The man behind a memorial quilt which was created to remember people who died from HIV and Aids wants to bring it back to Scotland more than 30 years later. Campaigner Ally van Tillo took charge of the UK-wide project in Edinburgh in the early days of the Aids epidemic in the late 1980s. He helped set up the Names Project UK after seeing the US version of the memorial and gathered contributions from people across the country who had lost loved ones to the virus. The quilt was recently brought out of storage for an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, attracting 70,000 visitors. Now Ally wants it to go on display in Scotland. The quilt is made up of 6ft by 3ft panels of fabric. Each one is created in memory of someone who died from Aids. The massive artwork is seen as a unique document of social history, representing 384 people from all around the UK. It is designed to remind people how far the fight against HIV has come – and how the virus no longer stops people living long and healthy lives. Mr Van Tillo said it was just as important for people to see it and understand its meaning today as it was when it was first created. He told BBC Scotland News: "In total there are 42 twelve foot by twelve foot panels, each comprising up to eight smaller panels. "Lives remembered include those of the writer Bruce Chatwin, actors Ian Charleson and Denham Elliot, gay rights activist Mark Ashton and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. "In addition, emotive testimonials, photos, and personal documents that tell the story behind the panel accompany many of the quilt panels." The original quilt project started in America in the 1980s, and it inspired Mr Van Tillo, formerly known as Alasdair Hume. "It was in Edinburgh for an exhibition," he said. "It had come over from San Francisco during the festival. "And I was thinking, why don't we have one here?" He found the beginnings of a similar project based in Bournemouth and met the organisers. He offered to look after the project, and it evolved. Siobhan Lanigan works with Aids Quilt UK, the charity which currently looks after the quilt. She said there had been a stigma around Aids in the 1980s. "Sometimes people couldn't be buried," she said. "Funeral directors wouldn't accept the bodies of people who had died with Aids. "Many families rejected their family members and would have nothing to do with them." She said the quilt was a memorial to the people who had died, a campaigning tool and a protest about the fact that the deaths were happening. "Society didn't seem to be taking it seriously in terms of finding a vaccine, finding the medications that were needed, doing the work that was needed," she added. The panel size was chosen to represent a typical grave plot. The sections would be made by family, friends, lovers, partners, cousins, uncles, aunts - anyone who had cared for the person who had died and who wanted to celebrate and commemorate their lives. Things were sewn in that were very personal to the person being remembered, like a ring or a cassette tape. Completed panels were sent to Edinburgh where they were sewn into blocks of eight panels, creating a 12ft by 12ft fabric display. Following the success of the Tate exhibition, Ally is keen to see the quilt in Scotland again. "To see it back in Edinburgh or Scotland just being shown would be brilliant," he said. "Especially to myself and my husband Ian, I think it would mean rather a lot." He added: "We cannot forget, because it's through forgetting that we're seeing all these rights being taken away from people again." Ms Lanigan is similarly enthusiastic. "There are still people all over the world who are dying as a result of HIV," she said. "So the quilt is a very powerful reminder that we still need to do the work to end that. We haven't got a vaccine. We haven't got a cure. "Scotland is our next goal. We would love to see the quilt back in Scotland where it was created. "We want people to be able to see it without having to pay to see it, because again, that was part of its purpose, that people should be able to see it." 'Brave and beautiful people' remembered in Aids quilt display UK Aids Memorial Quilt to be shown at Tate Modern I Kissed A Boy contestant shares story of HIV diagnosis Aids memorial quilt display aims to 'break stigma'
Daily Record
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Record
MSP aims to find out if famous West Lothian artwork can be returned from Tate Modern
Derelict Land Art: Five Sisters and the Five Sisters Bing sculpture was created by John Latham in 1976 were purchased by the Tate Modern Gallery the same year. Almond Valley MSP Angela Constance is bidding to find out whether an famous West Lothian artwork can be returned from the Tate Modern to a building within the community. The MSP has written to her colleague Angus Robertson MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture seeking advice on how to pursue the return of John Latham's artwork from the Tate Modern Gallery so it can be exhibited at the Scottish Co-op Discovery Centre, a community-led social and economic regeneration project which is transforming a historic West Calder building into a new heritage attraction and community space due to open in 2026. Derelict Land Art: Five Sisters and the Five Sisters Bing sculpture was created by John Latham in 1976 were purchased by the Tate Modern Gallery the same year. The Derelict Land Art: Five Sisters consisted of Wood, 14 photographs, 12 black and white gelatine silver prints on paper and 2 colour dye destruction prints, glass jar and shale. The Five Sisters Bing, also from 1976: was a sculpture of five books spread out onto a flat book to depict the five sisters. The Five Sisters Bings are preserved under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act, and it was proposed by Geoscientist Barbra Harvie in her 2005 report 'West Lothian Biodiversity Action Plan: Oil Shale Bings' that the area's shale bings are a unique habitat, not found elsewhere in Britain or Western Europe', a vital recreation area and 'a focus of community identity' - sharing both Latham's conceptualisation of the bings and the communities vison for the heritage centre. Angela explained in her letter: 'It is important for the heritage of the community that the artwork is returned and displayed at the Scottish Co-op Discovery Centre as requested by the local development trust. 'West Lothian has a long and proud tradition of cooperation. It is in this spirit that we request the return of John Latham's artwork to its rightful home in West Calder. 'Latham's conception of the bings and his vision of civic responsibility for the bings' status as artwork is a celebration of co-operative values which shares the heritage centres principles focusing on community identity by preserving the past and creating a future filled with promise, opportunity, and hope.' Matt Pearce, Project Director for the Scottish Co-operative Discovery Centre, added: 'The display spaces in the new Discovery Centre actually look out over The Five Sisters Bing and it was shale miners who started West Calder Co-operative. 'It just seems right that the artwork finds a permanent home here in our community and where anyone can appreciate it.'
SBS Australia
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
'Watershed moment': Kngwarray at the Tate Modern marks first major solo exhibition of the artist in Europe
Emily Kam Kngwarray came to art late in her life. Born in 1914, an Anmatyerr woman from Alhalker Country, she started producing her first batiks in the 1980's. Now, hanging in London's Tate Modern Gallery, 83 pieces spanning her 19 year career are on display. Warumungu and Luritja woman and lead curator, Kelli Cole, says the works are an extension of culture. "What you actually see in her work, batik and painting, is actually her culture, that is displayed or depicted onto those paintings. So everything that was important to Kngwarray is a part of her cultural connection to that country, is about her responsibilities to country. It is all about that body paint, that gestural mark that you actually paint when you're doing ceremony. So when you're looking at Kngwarray's paintings, they are just this total connection to who she is as an Anmatyerr woman." Five years in the making, the exhibition is the first major solo exhibition for an Indigenous Australian artist at the Tate. Described as one of Australia's preeminent artists, Emily Kam Kngwarray is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. Her works include paintings, textiles, and works on paper, and draw their inspiration from a deep connection to Country and cultural traditions. Having travelled to Kngwarray's community upwards of twelve times over the years, Kelli Cole says working with community was central to the curatorial process. "So when I talk about her cultural responsibilities, Kngwarray was a senior elder of her community, so she actually had to partake in ceremony. And so what that meant was they would go on country, they would paint themselves up, they would sing a song. That song had a specific song for each ceremony that she did. And with her gestural marks within her batiks and her paintings actually come from that extraordinary knowledge that she had. So prior to painting, she had been doing that for such a long time." The exhibition includes 83 pieces, some of which have never been shown in public before and have come from private collections from across Europe and America. While Emily Kam Kngwarray is well known in the Australian art world, her works are less recognised in Europe. Kelli Cole says by being on display somewhere like the Tate Modern, the works will gain even wider acclaim. "Look, her impact in Australia is huge. Kngwarray's had several solo exhibitions in Australia and in Japan. So she's a name that is very well known in Australia as a major, major artist. By bringing her works here to the Tate Modern, we are hoping that her name is going to be synonymous with the European sort of vocabulary. It's gonna be Emily Kam Kngwarray, Jackson Pollock, all of these Picassos. We're really hoping that we can actually put her on the world scale or the world stage and people will start knowing her works." The exhibition opened last week and runs until January 11th 2026 at the Tate Modern gallery in London. Considered part of a wider shift to showcase artists previously left out of the spotlight, Art critic Tabish Khan says it is a historic moment for the gallery. "It definitely feels like a watershed moment for Tate Modern to have such a sizable exhibition of an Aboriginal artist. And we're definitely seeing more museums showcasing Indigenous and First Nations artists. And I think it's a reflection of a few things. Number one, that we've neglected these artists and not really shown them, focusing more on Western art history. And two, a recognition that these are cultures that are very much in tune with nature. And part of the problem with the world is the fact that we haven't been in tune with nature. And now we're realising that mistake a bit too late. And these are artists who knew about this from the get-go and we should appreciate what they're telling us in their art."
