Tacita Dean
‘Water: Pulse’
Tacita Dean’s Disappearance at Sea follows the revolving lantern of a lighthouse and wide horizon of the sea at sunset. Exhibited as a looped 16mm projection, the play of colour and form is mesmerising, with the projector itself acting as a kind of small lighthouse or man-made sun.
Disappearance at Sea is the first in a number of Dean’s works inspired by the story of amateur sailor and inventor Donald Crowhurst, who is remembered for attempting to fake his progress in an around-the-world yacht race. As Dean notes, Crowhurst experienced ‘“time-madness”, where he believed he was floating through prehistory, utterly alone in an unforgiving seascape so far removed from human contact . . . [It] is only just possible to imagine standing in the last human place where the ocean starts and the land ends in a solitary beacon of safety’.
![A still photograph taken from within the lamp section of a lighthouse at sunset; the globe of the unlit lamp is at far left, with a pink sunset in the distance. A still photograph taken from within the lamp section of a lighthouse at sunset; the globe of the unlit lamp is at far left, with a pink sunset in the distance.](/index.php/system/files/styles/wide/private/2023-06/DEANtacita_DisappearanceAtSea1996_004_still.jpg?itok=uqjVDrj-)
Tacita Dean / United Kingdom b.1965 / Disappearance at Sea (still) 1996 / 16mm colour anamorphic film, optical sound, 14 minutes / © Tacita Dean / Courtesy: The artist, Frith Street Gallery London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris