Sixteen Blackboards, 1992

Author: Tacita Dean

Sixteen photos in white and black paper.

The work consist on a series of sixteen photos reproducing slate boards in with the artist made sketches with white chalk and large-scale drawings sometimes accompanied by texts and black and white photos.

The photographs of the slate boards were taken by the artist during her residence at Slade School of Fine Arts in 1991.

She painted on the slate board and erase them. She didn’t record the exact moment when the photos were taken nor the time taken within shots. The photos offer a fragmentary record of the work at the studio, using a slate board as a screen of her thought. And instead of taking a line of expression the whole work represent different concerns of the artist. Just like thoughts and memories, marks that the drawings leave in our lives: some details appear in one of her photos, and are intuited, erased in the next one; some others stay longer, coexisting with new ones. The introduction of collage images which vanish without a trace, completes the message.

Her work perfectly shows the relation between drawing, thought and analogue media.