Tim Head
Colour photoworks 1985-91

15 February - 17 March 2007
Wednesday-Friday 12-6, Saturday 12-4

Reception for the artist: Wednesday 14 March, 6-8 pm

Tim
Head's large photographic compositions are an important component of the ground-breaking work he made in the 1980s and early 1990s. They are true photographs, produced before inkjet technology made colour printing on this scale widespread: cibachrome and c-type prints up to 244 cm (8 feet) wide.

Four of the works in the show: Still-Life (Erasers); Erasers 2 (On The Rocks); and two works from the 'Petrochemicaland series', are staged still-lifes exploring consumerism, war and pollution. In Still-Life (Erasers) a pile of rubber pencil erasers shaped like skulls (we can only speculate on the original target market for these tiny memento mori), greatly enlarged, becomes a luminous vanitas. A related work, Erasers 2 (On The Rocks), throws the skulls together with toy armaments to create a kind of rubbish-dump situated in a bleak environment of plastic sheeting. The Petrochemicaland series presents endless landscapes of synthetic detritus. A fifth work, Winter, the image of a dead tree inverted, coated in fluorescent paint and illuminated, suggests the sinister beauty that can arise from our manipulation of nature.

Head's concerns have not dated; and his practice at this time, encompassing installation, painting and photography, foreshadows the heterogeneous technique of today's "project-based" artists. During the period of Head's show at Matthew Bown Gallery, Tate Britain will be re-creating his installation Displacements (1975-6) and will include a further work in a survey of students who were at St Martin's 1965-72.


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A note on the works:
Several of the photographs exhibited are original cibachrome prints dating from the 1980s or early 1990s; as far as we know, cibachrome prints are no longer made in Europe.

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Tim Head was born in 1946 in London. He studied at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1965 to 1969, where his teachers included Richard Hamilton and Ian Stephenson. In 1968 he went to New York where he worked as an assistant to Claes Oldenburg, and met Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, John Cale and others. He studied on the Advanced Sculpture Course run by Barry Flanagan at St Martin's School of Art, London, in 1969. In 1971 he worked as an assistant to Robert Morris on his Tate Gallery show. From 1971 to 1979 he taught at Goldsmiths College, London. In 1987 Head was awarded First Prize in the 15th John Moores Exhibition.

Head has exhibited widely internationally. His solo shows include MoMA, Oxford (1972); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1974 and 1992); British Pavilion, Venice Biennale (1980); ICA, London (1985); and Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, and touring (1995). He has taken part in group shows including 'Documenta 6', Kassel (1977); 'British Art Now: An American Perspective', Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Royal Academy, London (1980); 'The British Art Show', Arts Council Tour (1984); 'Gambler', Building One, London (1990); and 'Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain 1965-75', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2000).

EDUCATION
St Martin's School of Art, London. Postgraduate Diploma in Sculpture. 1969-70
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. BA Honours, Fine Art. 1965-69

TEACHING
Slade School of Fine Art, Universtity College London. 1976-present
Goldsmiths College School of Art, University of London. 1971-79

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS AND PRIZES
First Prize, John Moores 15th Liverpool Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1987
Elephant Trust Award, 1985
Fellowship at Clare Hall and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK, 1977-78
Gulbenkian Foundation Visual Arts Award, 1975

SELECTED COMMISSIONS
A Hard Day's Night, CD-ROM, edition 1000. Commissioned by eyestorm.com, 2000
Artistic Director for The Eurythmics Peacetour, touring worldwide, 1999
Light Rain, Artezium Arts and Media Centre, Luton, UK, permanent work, 1998
Floor Design, Science Museum, London, 1995
Film for Gavin Bryars concert, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London and European tour, 1993-94
Sculpture commission, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, UK, 1985
.

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
The Arts Council of Great Britain
The British Council Collection
The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Tate Gallery, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Kunstverein Freiburg; Kunstverein Heilbronn; Stadtgalerie SaarbrŸcken; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 1995
City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, 1993
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1992
'The Tyranny of Reason', ICA, London, 1985
British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1980
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK, 1972

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
'C'est Arrivé Demain', Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France, 2003-4
'Days Like These', Tate Triennial exhibition of contemporary British Art, Tate Britain, London, 2003
'Live in Your Head: concept and experiment in Britain 1965-75', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2000-1
'Close Up', Kunsthaus Baselland, Kunstverein Freiburg im Marienbad and Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, 2000-1
'Gambler', Building One, London, 1990
'Seven Obsessions', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1990
'Sculpture Alternatives - Aspects of Photography and Sculpture in Britain 1965-1982', Tate Gallery, London, 1985
'Documenta 6', Kassel, Germany, 1978

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tufnell, Ben, 'Tim Head', Days Like These: Tate Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary British Art 2003, Tate Publishing, 2003
Lapp, Axel, 'Tim Head: Osterwalder's Art Office, Hamburg, Germany', Art Monthly, no 262, December-January 2002-3
Berg, Stephan, 'In the Underworld of the Zombies', Tim Head, Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, 1995
Livingstone, Marco, 'Return of the Body-Snatcher', Tim Head, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1992
Cooke, Lynne, 'Mysterious Coincidences', Artscribe, no. 69, May 1988
Searle, Adrian, 'Tim Head', Artforum, June 1988
Head, Tim, 'Preface', The Tyranny of Reason, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1985
Lynton, Norbert, 'Tim Head', Tim Head, British
Pavilion, XXXIXth Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1980


Petrochemicaland I
1991
Cibachrome print, 122 x 152 cm



Petrochemicaland II
1991
Cibachrome print, 122 x 152 cm


Erasers 2 (On The Rocks)
1987
Cibachrome print, 122 x 244 cm


Still-Life (Erasers)
1985
C-print, 122 x 200 cm


Winter
1986
Cibachrome print