End of a Century 1990–2000

Mona Hatoum, Present Tense  1996

This olive oil soap is a traditional Palestinian product which has been produced since the 10th century in Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem. Mona Hatoum drew on the soap blocks by pushing tiny red glass beads into their surface. The drawing depicts the map of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord between Israel and Palestine, with the beads outlining the territories to be handed back to the Palestinian authority. Hatoum highlights the fleeting impermanence of official borders, in contrast to the lasting history of the Palestinian people.

Gallery label, February 2024

Rachel Whiteread, Torso  1988

Torso 1988 is a sculpture in plaster, cast from the inside of a hot water bottle. In 1988, a year after graduating from the Slade School of Art in London, Whiteread held her first solo exhibition at the Carlisle Gallery, London, showing the four works that began her exploration of small domestic objects and items of furniture: the cast of the underside of a bed, Shallow Breath 1988, the cast of a small cupboard covered in black felt, Closet 1988, and the cast of a mid-century woman’s dressing table with glass top reattached to the plaster cast, Mantle 1988. Torso 1988 was the fourth piece included in this exhibition. The works encapsulated the interests that were to define Whiteread’s career over the next thirty years – the process of casting forgotten space, an experimental use of materials and casting techniques, and the emotional power of everyday objects.

Damien Hirst, The Lovers (The Committed Lovers) (The Spontaneous Lovers) (The Detached Lovers) (The Compromising Lovers)  1991

These shelves are stocked with jarred cow organs in a clinical presentation of life that contrasts the varied feelings of the title. Though bodies can be contained, their feelings are harder to capture. Damien Hirst explains that the series came from an urge ‘to look into myself, to ... try to work out why my body is separated from my mind or if indeed it is’. It predates his works in which whole animals are preserved in formaldehyde.

Gallery label, January 2025

Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock  1994

Away from the Flock is a floor-based sculpture consisting of a glass-walled tank filled with formaldehyde solution in which a dead sheep is fixed so that it appears to be alive and caught in movement. Thick white frames surround and support the tank, setting in brilliant relief the transparent turquoise of the solution in which the sheep is immersed. Away from the Flock is unusual for a Hirst sculpture in that it exists in three versions, all created the same year, of which ARTIST ROOM’s is the third. The principal difference between the three versions (reproduced together Hirst and Burn, pp.84–5) is that the sheep in the first version has an entirely black head and its forelegs are raised further off the floor of the tank, so that it appears to be arrested mid-jump. The sheep in versions two and three are more similar in appearance and in pose; ARTIST ROOM’s sheep has less black on its head and a pinker tinge in the rest of its wool than the others.

Tessa Boffin, maker Sunil Gupta, Untitled no.2  1989, printed 2024

Tessa Boffin, maker Sunil Gupta, Untitled no.4  1989, printed 2024

Tessa Boffin, maker Sunil Gupta, Untitled no.5  1989, printed 2024

Sarah Lucas, Inferno  2000

In Inferno, two walnuts and a cigar become makeshift genitalia. The warm lightbulb glowing in the bowl suggests a fiery underworld. The toilet is an intimate place and a regular subject for Sarah Lucas. Throughout her work, everyday objects are playfully transformed to expose the mischievous, destructive and vulnerable parts of life. Humour is central to her work, often creating a sense of unease. Lucas says, ‘When humour happens, things get good. Less depressing. It's a kind of magic. Suddenly things make sense.’

Gallery label, January 2025

Gillian Wearing CBE, ‘Everything is connected in life...’  1992–3

For this series, Gillian Wearing stood on a busy street and asked passersby to write down what was on their mind. She then photographed them holding their statements. She was interested in how the public and private identities of ordinary people are self-fashioned and documented. A broad cross-section of people participated in the series. It provides a fascinating social and historical document, capturing the economic decline in Britain in the early 1990s as well as the expression of intimate thoughts or personal convictions.

Gallery label, January 2025

R.B. Kitaj, The Wedding  1989–93

In this painting, Kitaj captures various moments from his wedding to fellow artist Sandra Fisher (1947–1994). The artist, on the right side, wears the traditional shawl of Jewish bridegrooms, and leans forward to embrace Sandra. On the left, wearing a top hat, is the Rabbi Abraham Levy. Under the chuppah (canopy), are his children and several artists. Lucian Freud (1922–2011) is on the left, Frank Auerbach (born 1931) in the middle and David Hockney (born 1937), the best man, is on the right, referencing the artistic community which he built around himself. The Wedding brings together key themes in Kitaj’s art and thought, including his increasing awareness of his identity as a Jewish man and the notion of diaspora that is important in Jewish thought, experience and identity.

Gallery label, October 2022

Peter Doig, Echo Lake  1998

Echo Lake is a large, dark painting of a scene at night. Like many of Doig’s paintings of the late 1990s, it is landscape in format, with a composition based on horizontal bands of colour overlaid with detail. The painting is bisected by a line of white representing the shore of a lake. Above it is a band of earth and scrubby vegetation painted in white and pastel colours. This area is illuminated by the headlamps of an American-style police car located at the centre-right of the image. The bright lights on the car’s roof are roughly level with the top of the vegetation. Above this point, filling the top third of the painting, is an area of purplish black. A few twinkling lights suggest distant habitations. On the right side of the painting, the trunks of trees growing above the shoreline are partially illuminated. Their branches extend up into the darkness. They are compositionally balanced by a telegraph pole on the left side of the painting at the level of the road on which the police car is parked. A man wearing black trousers, a white shirt and a narrow black tie (presumably a policeman) stands at the lakeshore looking out of the painting towards the viewer. His hands encircle his face and his mouth is an o-shape indicating that he is shouting out into the dark lake. The title suggests that nothing comes back to him but his own voice. The bottom half of the painting represents a blurry mirror image of the landscape above the shoreline. This mirrored reflection provides the visual version of an echo.

Tessa Boffin, maker Sunil Gupta, Untitled no.1  1989, printed 2024

Tessa Boffin, maker Sunil Gupta, Untitled no.3  1989, printed 2024

Chris Ofili, No Woman, No Cry  1998

No Woman No Cry is a tribute to the London teenager Stephen Lawrence who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993. A public inquiry into the murder investigation concluded that the Metropolitan police force was institutionally racist. The woman depicted is Stephen’s mother, Doreen. In each of her tears is a collaged image of Stephen Lawrence’s face, while the words ‘R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence’ are just visible beneath the layers of paint. As well as this specific reference, the artist intended the painting to be read as a universal portrayal of melancholy and grief. Ofili titled the work after the 1974 song by Jamaican musician Bob Marley.

Gallery label, October 2022