Art that’s too tasteful for its own good
It feels like a coup for Tate Liverpool to be hosting the first solo museum exhibition in Britain for the internationally feted artist Theaster Gates. Much of his work interrogates race and inequality in his native America, and his new show, Amalgam, is no exception.
Its jumping-off point is the littleknown history of Malaga, a small island off the New England state of Maine. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the island was home to a mixedrace community – hence the show’s title, which plays anagrammatically with its name.
By the early 20th century, developers were eyeing up the island as a tourism opportunity. Meanwhile, politicians were fulminating against what local newspapers described as a “degenerate colony”. In 1912, Maine’s governor forcibly evicted the island’s community, relocating them to the mainland, without providing housing or jobs. The proposed development never happened, and Malaga is still uninhabited today.
In a series of dramatic installations, the artist treats Malaga’s history as a sort of fall-from-paradise origin myth.
The first gallery is dominated by an enormous wedge-shaped sculpture, clad with slate roofing tiles – a reference both to the homes destroyed on Malaga, and Gates’s father, who was a roofer. It evokes an ancient ziggurat or pyramid constructed around a tomb.
Nearby, a neon sign flashing the word “Malaga” spins above a carefully arranged circle of smashed slate.
Thus, we are invited to reflect, American capitalism was built on the bones of slaves.
Elsewhere, Gates presents wooden display cases filled with African masks and architectural fragments, as well as scraps of flags and ceramics (he trained as a potter): in the show’s postmodern conceit, these “found objects” from the island were assembled by Malaga’s (imaginary) department of tourism.
Historical links with the transatlantic slave trade of Liverpool ensure the show derives added resonance from its setting. It’s all powerful, eye-catching stuff, dealing with dark historical material in a way that is aesthetically pleasing – and deeply versed in modern art. If I have a criticism of Gates, though, it is that he is too elegant, his sensibility too refined, for his own good.
We are invited to reflect that American capitalism was built on the bones of slaves
Everything feels faultlessly executed and beautifully appointed – but also, perhaps, given the rawness of the content, excessively tasteful. For instance, Gates’s film, Dance of Malaga, has the production values of a glossy advert, while many of the sculptures, with their Brancusi-like, rough-hewn wooden plinths, or Judd-like repetitions, are overly reliant on the visual language of modernism. Gates, who hails from Chicago, is known for his urban-regeneration projects that have revitalised neglected neighbourhoods in the city’s South Side. In a sense, he is a gentrifier but his default “look” is the aesthetic, of gentrification, too: impeccably modish, artfully styled, and a touch bland.
Until May 3; tickets: 0151 702 7400