We round up the reviews for this new exhibition of the British artist’s work.
The Guardian: ***** “There’s so much stuff in Atkins’s art, so much weirdness and generosity, so much bleakness and humour.”
The Observer: **** “But if the films sometimes appear creepy and cold, like something trapped beneath a stone, it is because the characters are just going through the motions. They have no freedom of expression, only what Atkins permits. And the sense is that what you are encountering throughout is the artist’s own knowledge of distance, pain and deferral.”
The Arts Desk: **** “Emotions too raw to explore”
The Independent: **** “Career-spanning exhibition is undeniably very clever – but more than that, it is heartfelt and deeply autobiographical.”
Time Out: **** “Funny, clever and deeply moving, this career-spanning exhibition explores the essence of being human in an age of AI-generated faces and digital avatars.”
Wallpaper.com: “The theme of death is ever-present. Sometimes, this is highly personal. The two-hour film Nurses Come and Go, but None for Me (2024) features actor Toby Jones reading diaries written by Atkins’ father following his cancer diagnosis. ‘A symptom in contemporary Western cultures is trying not to think about death, but then it becomes this terrible, awful shock when it does happen,’ says Atkins. His father’s diaries represent a form of processing death as it happens, and during his lifetime, these writings were available for the family to read.”
The Telegraph: *** “This mid-career survey may be pretentious, but the British artist manages to summon something sorcerous and compelling.”
flolondon.co.uk: “As someone with little exposure to this genre of work I found this exhibition intriguing. His ability to repurpose these technologies in his art to challenge the ever-dwindling gap between the digital world and human feeling was enthralling. The exhibition carries human themes of intimacy, love and loss, which are theatrically generated and prompt a sense of melancholy.”
The Upcoming: **** “Unfolding like a fever dream, Ed Atkins’s survey exhibition at Tate Britain is haunted by his avatars, self-portraits and uncanny animations, teetering between the intimate and the absurd. In the surreal space, Atkins is omnipresent – his image looms, his voice echoes and his words are woven into captions, canvases and screens.”
The exhibition is on display at the Tate Britain until the 25th August.