Jimmie Durham's artwork at Tate Modern | Tate

This video takes you behind the scenes, installing a display of works by artist Jimmie Durham at Tate Modern.

This footage was filmed in December 2020.

Jimmie Durham was born in 1940 in the US.

Durham’s art incorporates a range of media and processes such as sculptural assemblage, painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, photography, video, performance and poetry.

Many of Durham's include whatever materials were near to hand, and accessible for the artist, including stone, wood and animal bones and hides, alongside car parts, plastic and metal pipe, glass and other detritus of the modern world.

In 1994 Durham returned to Europe and remained there for the rest of his life, living and working in several different cities including Dublin, Rome and Berlin. In Europe his work often focused on the deconstruction of national identities and an analysis of the narratives, architecture and monuments relating to them.

Durham died in Berlin on 17 November 2021, aged 81.

[bestoddisee]

I see in his work the same creative thought process that my Grandparents had to use to survive WW1, the Great Depression and WW2. They used what they had available to make what they needed to protect and care for their land. Come forward two generations to me, a gallery owner and artist who has gone back to the land and homesteading and my adult children with their children who come here to learn how to make do, to protect the land and to live a life more independent of the corporate and government control that seems to try to shape their generation’s lives as helpless. A fascinating display. Thank you for showing it to folks like me who can not make it in person.

[pelwzei]

I saw that at the garage sale over in Santa Cruz hahaaa.

[jasonblack]

living in Berlin for 5 year and going to galleries regularly, the paper handouts explaining some deeper meaning of the mostly horrible contemporary art was the most cringe... much like all the word play of this video, trying to make art that takes little time and thought seem more important than it is... there is little innovation creativity to this art... its not well make or complex... the only thing is has going for it is the complex narrative that wraps it... in this sense most contemporary art is a con.

[jeroenrl]

Very impressive. How tall is the animal sculpture?

[johntaylor]

Reminds me of the Homer Simpson Artwork he did in an episode. 😂

[sopelhair]

The Tate completely sidesteps his unfounded claim to Indigenity. As interesting and innovative as he has been, he still remains a pretendian.

[geedorah]

the bit about all animals wanting human love was cringe

[eternaldoorman]

Everything is more significant when you're wearing a face mask.

[Acquavallo]

Is he really an important artist?
The only time I hear about him (apart from this video) is when people point out his fraudulent claims to Cherokee identity

[JJONNYREPP]

Jimmie Durham's artwork at Tate Modern | Tate 0922am 2.5.23 a cross between the shoddy special effects of dr who circa 1980... and jan svankmayer. sorry, i know you will sugest i need to get it, get with it and get down with the programme. But this is terrible. supposedly subverting the notions regards power ie: creating a piece which is so absurd it has no narrative and demands nothing short of ignoring. i am surprised that curators and archivists who simpering about the galleries of the great and the good, demand we take into account the detritus of the past, and have not reacted the... the crap that is put before us all in the name of high art... such nonsense should have begun and ended with Duchamp. the words: post modern monstrosity never read so apt.

[robertcoyle]

Not very impressive junk art. Hype it though you may, it's still just rather familiar forms.