AIR: Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean
British European b.1965
Chalk Fall 2018
Chalk on blackboard
Nine panels: 121.9 x 243.8cm (each); 365.8 x 731.5cm (overall)
Purchased 2021. The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust
Collection: The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

This cliff seems solid, like the monumental wall of a fortress. On closer inspection, we see the rough waves churning beneath, and realise the cliff-face is giving way, falling into the ocean.

Tacita Dean evokes the famous White Cliffs of Dover which are eroding evermore swiftly as a result of climate change. Chalk Fall also reflects the social and economic impacts of Brexit on the United Kingdom — an island nation separating from Europe and tearing at its own social fabric in the process.

A large work made in chalk on blackboard installed in a bright gallery space.

Tacita Dean’s Chalk Fall 2018, installed at GOMA for ‘Air’, November 2022 / © Tacita Dean / Photograph: J Ruckli, QAGOMA

As Dean began to create Chalk Fall, her close friend Keith Collins was diagnosed with a tumour. ‘Every day’, she recounts, ‘I wrote the date on the board, chalking chalk with chalk in a sedimentation of time and emotion that had a terrible constructive intensity.’ We can also make out chalked notes such as ‘aerial view’ and ‘fade to black’ that are anchored in Dean’s practice as a filmmaker. Chalk Fall is at once a drawing, a journal, a history painting and the record of a deep friendship maintained across an ocean.

A detail view of a work blade in white chalk on a blackboard.

Tacita Dean’s Chalk Fall (detail) 2018 / Purchased 2021. The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust / © Tacita Dean / Photograph: M Campbell, QAGOMA