NeMe: Tate Triennial 2006

Every three years Tate Britain holds a Triennial exhibition showcasing new developments in recent art. This third Tate Triennial 2006 is curated by Beatrix Ruf, Director of the Kunsthalle in Zurich, who offers an international perspective on the present British art scene. She has brought together thirty-six artists who all explore a significant strand in contemporary art: the reuse and recasting of cultural material.

The exhibition features artists from across different generations who work with a diverse range of media: from film, painting, photography, and sculpture to installation and live work. Many of the works in this exhibition focus on themes of repetition, reprocessing and the appropriation of images and facts, on a spectrum between tribute and pastiche.

Different visual codes and imagery are being combined, often from competing rather than connecting influences, to create highly personal languages. Its forms range from the classic reiteration of motifs, collage and montage to file sharing and digital reproduction. While these approaches are most commonly associated with postmodernism, the Tate Triennial reveals how an entirely new range of possibilities is reinvigorating such processes in current art practice.