Year 3 by Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen is one of the most influential video artists of the last three decades. He has since transferred his skills to film, where he has made the works 12 YEARS A SLAVE, WIDOWS, HUNGER and SHAME. Despite having navigated towards the cinema and Hollywood, I am always delighted to see his work in a gallery context where its aesthetic beauty and political discourse are always mixed to perfection.
McQueen and his family recently moved back to the UK after living for decades in Amsterdam. With his move back he wanted to create a piece of work that asks ‘What does London look like now?’
His answer to that question is YEAR 3, the biggest piece McQueen has yet undertaken.
The Tate’s photographic department was dispatched to every Year 3 class in London where they took a class portrait of every single one. The YEAR 3 exhibit is all the photographs that now hang in the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain.
It is immense. Each class is perfectly turned out; every grouping a perfect tableau of students and teacher. It’s a playful and humbling work which shows - in one swoop - what London does - and will - look like. It is very moving to walk amongst this gigantic and long gallery where Mike Nelson’s piece THE ASSET STRIPPERS recently stood. That exhibit acted as a sort of death harbinger for agrarian Britain, whilst YEAR 3 is youthful and joyous future image.) How wonderful to pass students who have come specially to find their class photos; they squeal with delight while parents take photographs. Seeing all the different kinds of classes there are in London is inspiring; from the big-in-size to those classes with two students and four adult teacher/aides. From a ballet class of girls in pink rehearsal tutus at a school for dance, to seven-year-olds who have severe disabilities and for whom posing for a photograph is impossible.
Parallel to the Tate Britain exhibit, billboards have fanned out across London’s Underground and on motorways with blown up school photographs. The installation literally taking to the streets, the children looking down on us all gapped teeth, smiles and pride.
YEAR 3 at Tate Britain installation view.
YEAR 3 billboards adorn an Underground station.
The amazing Steve McQueen.