Tabula Rasa, Two-way table, Counter, Dot.comme

Three sculptural, site-specific works relating to tables (Tabula Rasa, Two-Way Table, Counter), and a 6 mins video of a performance in a telephone box (Dot.comme). Part of a broader research project exploring relationships between violation, repair and decoration. Dean exhibited three sculptural/site-specific pieces and a video at “Les Merveilles du Monde”, an international group exhibition

at the Musee des Beaux Arts, Dunkirk. All works explored relationships between violation, repair and decoration. The sculptures

were site-specific in that each involved a table/work surface that informed the piece in different ways, from a 2.8m long

reproduction Edwardian dining table with French polished mahogany veneer on chipboard (Two-Way Table) to a 4m long,

melamine-topped, three-part shop counter (Counter). Each also involved extensive drilling, filling, colouring in, varnishing,

sanding, not necessarily in this order. Each table was maintained as a table, however much of it Dean removed or replaced.

Each work originated in a different context, which also informed its development: for example, Two-Way Table was made in a

wood-panelled ex-ballroom during “The Greatest Show on Earth” (2003), a group exhibition including Tacita Dean and Douglas

Gordon. The video Dot.comme documented a performance in France (2001) that took place in a glass telephone box, with two

performers and a set of coloured chinagraph pencils. This was previously screened at ‘White Window and Guests’, Lille (2003),

alongside work by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Dean used the Dunkirk exhibition to see these works together for the first time, enabling her to assess their considerable

differences, and how each uniquely negotiated site, context and a shared methodology. (A fourth table piece, another slide

projection based on Tableaux, now held in a private collection in Holland, is excluded from the current RAE submission because

it was made in 1999). Co-exhibitors included David Medalla, Adam Chodzko and Phyllida Barlow

Two-Way Table is included in the publication “White Window – Shared Work: Travail Partege”, (La Plate-Forme, Dunkerque,

2005) and was funded by ACE and KIAD (now OCCA).