Ed Atkins’ exhibition starts with a large, white embroidery, not unlike a screen at a Japanese temple, spiritual and serene. But don’t be fooled – Atkins is not returning to the handmade in an attempt to counter our ever-more digitalised world. In fact, the work incorporates an acoustic device and takes in the sounds of the videos on the reverse. Or as Atkins words it, the embroidery is “putting out silence”.
Ed Atkins, The Worm, 2021
Atkins’ words are used as labels throughout the exhibition. It is a device Tate Britain has used before and the curator, Polly Staple, tells me it proved popular with audiences. “Ed is a writer, as well as an artist who is living and breathing his voice, so it made sense to have him write the labels. It questions the authority of the museum text,” she says. Atkins also uses a more objective voice in the form of wall labels by a fictional art press. “In 1905, the composer worried. Would parents still sing to their children? If they could press play on a song with the same ease that she applies to the electric light …?” one of them reads. Here we are, more than a century later, still worrying. Will artificial intelligence take over the world? Will humans become extended computers, chips implanted in their bodies?
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