How could you not be excited by Warp x Tate? Pioneering electronic music label teams up with top UK art institution for a night inspired by Jeremy Deller’s 'Acid Brass'. What a setting for a party. What a perfect way to see the re-hang of the newly refurbished gallery. As the day drew nearer, it became obvious that I was not alone. Twatter and Facewaste were abuzz. Asking around, it seemed that everyone was planning on going. This had the taste of a big rave, albeit it likely to be an above-board and respectable one.
By Friday afternoon
@Tate was sending out cautionary tweets about limited capacity. I bolted out of work at 5.30pm on the dot, raced down to Vauxhall and hurried over the bridge. By 6pm the queue was already snaking around the block from the ramp to the lower ground, while the front steps were littered with groups of people. We made it in by quarter past, dodged the secondary queue for the cloakroom and headed up the stairs to see what was going on.
The lights were out in the busy central hall with projectors casting Warp videos onto the walls. At the far end, a blown up version of Deller's Acid Brass spider map filled the space between two colossal columns. In front of this, Patten was onstage, emitting disjointed noise and geek cool. Unless you were crushed into a fairly small sweet spot at the front, though, the sound from two tiny speakers was quiet and echoey: lost in the cavernous hall with drinks queues longer than Mark Wallinger’s 'State Britain'. Instead we set off in search of Warp installations dotted around the newly rehung galleries.
First stop: Hudson Mohawke's 'Summer of Love' in the 'The Chapman Family Collection' room. It's packed with people wandering between the faux-African Macdonalds sculptures, chatting and posing for Instagrams, as an oil wheel projector casts psychedelic swirls onto the roof above. A short loop of ambient electronica pulses through a couple of small speakers on the floor. It’s a playful environment, which works well, but Hud Mo’s
Dazed video made to preview the installation does a better job of evoking the spirit of 1987.
Just outside the door, a studio light has been set up to illuminate Deller’s original Acid Brass spider diagram, hung in a corner next to a colossal Peter Doig. Here we can read about the original 1996 performance, which saw a brass pit band playing acid house anthems. The diagram describes links between the two, tying the rave movement into a wider cultural context of pit strikes, electronic dance music and the North. I love this piece and can’t wait to hear the embodiment of it later. The rest of the room contains some Wolfgang Tillmans photos, a Fiona Rae painting, a rather nice black and white Keith Coventry and some large panes of crushed flowers which appear to be leaking down the wall. On behalf of the old Tate, I'm slightly shocked. This bodes well.
Having lost my friends, I leave the 1990s and time travel back towards the 1980s. I’m immediately be blown away by a Bill Woodrow junk sculpture, a life-size elephant head on the wall with AK47s for tusks, standing guard over a village-meeting-style circle of smashed car door windows. Its ears are maps of Africa, torn from large-scale Atlases. Rejoined by the group, we pose for photographs with the epic wall trophy and follow its sad gaze across the room to Mark Wallinger's
‘Where There’s Muck’ - the word ‘Albion’ spray painted in giant Tory-blue letters directly onto the wall, over a tableau of burnt wood, with a worker figure on the central panel. The date is 1985. Exciting stuff. We pose for photos with Barry Flanagan’s ‘Leaping Hare’. It lends itself well to narrative.
Floating further back in time, I'm drawn by the sounds of electronica, past a startling late Francis Bacon triptych and Richard Long's photograph of 'A Line Made by Walking', into a room of 1960s collage and bricolage sculpture. Anwar Jalal Shemza's
'Chessmen One', 1961, is a revelation of Islamic modernism. I love the Paolzzi, as always, and Burra's drawing-cum-photomontage
'Keep Your Head'. I didn't even know he made them. Through a doorway, Henry Moore's shiny, domed 'Maquette for Helmet Head' pulls me towards it like a magnet. I thought I knew Henry Moore, but this whole room is a physical rediscovery for me. Over the years his work has become flattened in my mind, by successive 2D reproductions and sketches. This is a powerful space to be in though, with all its myriad angles, air resonant with form and the ehoes of vintage synths from next door. Modern British sculpture might have it's associations with Britten at al but perhaps it should be displayed more frequently with early electronica in the background.
The 808 and 303 tribute room runs parallel to this one and features the two legendary synths on plinths at opposite ends of the room. They're not plugged in, but the plinths have movement sensors on them. Someone tells me that every time you pass one you add or remove a layer to the track which loops through the speakers on the floor. I never work out the exact configuration. Around the room are black and white photographs by
Chris Shaw, one of the few British contemporary photographs still making good work in this tradition. Each is scrawled with their own quirky title in black pen. They're juxtaposed with prints from 1960s Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, whose impressionistic blurs of Tokyo nightlife have enjoyed a significant reappraisal in the West of late. The gritty aesthetics complement the raw sound.
By this point we’re gasping for a drink so we decide to try my luck at the slightly quieter downstairs bar. There's still a huge queue outside, trickling through a barrier of security guards in ones and twos. One half of The Blessings (as I discover when I speak to him later) is playing some pretty tasty off-kilter beats next to the bar. He gets a few people moving, but it's hard to galvanize a dance floor bisected by a 15min drinks queue. Unable to take our drinks anywhere else, we elect to re-watch the
Dazed videos in one of the screening rooms.
Back upstairs, we head in search of Melancholy. I find myself in Martin Creed's light room, which for some reason has a crowd barrier running through it. Taking the right fork I find myself channelled, in slowly strobing light, towards a closed door in the next room. A group of people is sitting in my way. I step over them to duck out of the channel. Later on I find out that this was the queue. Apparently, at it's peak people were waiting for Creed's light to go out and trying to push into the queue, only to be caught in the act as it flicked back on again.
The last stop on the installation trail is Rustie, in the Turner wing. I find it by accident, following the sound while misdirecting a friend towards the 808 tribute room. It's the best sound I've heard all night. It draws us down the corridor lined with Turners and into a room with two speakers. There are no beats; only resonance, high and bright. People are sitting, walking around or staring intently into oily sunbursts and thickly textured rural scenes. When sound in our room fades, I realise it's getting louder in the opposite alcove. We migrate accross. There are another two speakers here. A group dressed in black, some with beards, join me. I head back into the corridor between the rooms, sound washing between them, and watch 'Hannibal Crossing the Alps'. The music is reaching euphoric cresendo. In the room I've just come from, a large man with a serious beard throws his arms into the air in semi-ironic elation. He's framed by a huge golden, greeny-brown painting. It's beautiful. We keep chasing the sound down the corridor. It's 10 channels in total, split between 5 rooms, in and out of which we wheel and glide. I could spend all night here, but it's 9 now and time for the main event: Jeremy Deller's Acid Brass Band. We head back to the main hall in anticipation.
Halfway towards the front we hit a wall of people and pause to drink newly acquired ciders, which we’ve now realised are cheaper than beer. It's as crowded now as it was at the start. Eventually, a figure in baby blue suit jacket pops up onstage, folllowed by another, and another. All carrying shiny brass instruments. The crowd whoops and cheers. As they strike up, we start to dance. We've been waiting all night for the opportunity. On the grand stone walls around us, scenes of dancing crowds in warehouses strobe and flicker. The people around us are fairly static, so we form a chain and start snaking towards the front. Reaching a impasse by a roped off artwork we stop and introduce ourselves to the people who's space we've invaded. They're much more lively. It's all smile and grins as we groove through the set. The band are clearly having fun too, especially the conductor, whose manic grin and enthusiasm remind me of that guy who always climbs up on the speakers at the front to really let loose.
When the set ends someone near us starts a joky chant of "One More Tune!" But it's all over. We drift out of the cavernous hall, out onto the grand steps, littered with people smoking and donning coats. Out into the night. The iron railings around the building are plastered with bikes, strapped on at jaunty angles. Waving farewell to my friends I weave through groups of fellow ravers over the river and back towards the station. I catch the eye of the guy boarding my train with me and we sit next to each other to loudly compare notes on the night. It feels like 5am in the morning.
I get home and go to bed with the ghosts of artworks flashing on my retinas in the usual place of hi-hats and synths echoing in my ears. It’s 11pm.
