Patrick Keiller: The Robinson Institute
Tate Britain, London
Robinson is the fictitious subject of
Patrick Keiller's film trilogy, a maverick scholar and flaneur whose
travels around London and the English countryside are documented by a
mysterious institute. Transplanting this ingenious conceit to the
Tate Britain has allowed Keiller to expand on the political and
cultural reflections of his film, and make connections across art
forms and eras. His own footage of fields, churchyards and lichened
road signs appears alongside Romantic and modernist representations
of the natural environment, from the picturesque beauty of JMW
Turner's watercolours to the uncanny landscapes of Paul Nash. Keiller
explores the ways in which capitalism imprints itself on the British
landscape, with pipelines, power stations and fenced-off military
bases creating a disturbing psychogeography. Apocalyptic portents are
scattered throughout, from meteorites which fell on 19th
century Oxfordshire, to a monitor showing Cold War-era
science-fiction classic Quatermass II. As a corrective to
this, Keiller traces a radical history of dissent, from handkerchiefs
commemorating the Peterloo Massacre to photographs of protesters
dancing on the Aldermaston missile silo. What might at first seem
like an idiosyncratic miscellany becomes a powerful meditation on
art, politics and place.
Until 14 October 2012
Unpublished sample review
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