In my ignorance I didn’t even know ‘the Tanks’ at Tate Modern existed. Instead of going in the main entrance, go round the back to the entrance of the Blavatnik Building (next to the shop), then instead of catching a lift to a higher gallery or the bridge across to the main building, walk down the wide concrete spiral staircase. This brings you to a dark and claustrophobic warren of spaces with big beams and arches made of raw concrete, which makes it feel like an underground car park. And it’s in this gloomy space that Tate have arranged a display creating a dialogue between two artists, Alberto Giacometti and Daria Martin.
Alberto Giacometti in the Tanks at Tate Modern, showing (from left to right) ‘Four figurines on a stand’, ‘Tall figure II’ and ‘Woman of Venice IX’ (photo by the author)
Giacometti figures
Giacometti is, of course, famous for the stick-thin, elongated statuettes or figurines he developed during and after the Second World War. The classic way to read them is through an existentialist filter, as post-Holocaust, post-atom bomb figures, wasted and mutilated by war and horror. As you can see they are displayed here with dramatic son-et-lumiere lighting which emphasises darkness and shadows.
Alberto Giacometti in the Tanks at Tate Modern, showing ‘Man pointing’ from 1947 (photo by the author)
Giacometti sculptures
But before the war, in the 1930s, Giacometti was involved in Parisian surrealism and made a series of surrealist-inspired cage-like sculptures. One of these is displayed in a funky circular room off to one side, which has retained its original industrial iron girders and riveting. Within an expensive glass case is displayed the work titled ‘Hour of the Traces’.
Alberto Giacometti in the Tanks at Tate Modern, showing ‘Hour of the Traces’ from 1932 (photo by the author)
What appear to be, or nearly are, household objects (a small table, a coat hanger) are placed in precarious balance to create a mobile indicating, maybe, precarity and fragility, the sense of vulnerability Giacometti was to carry over into his wasted, burned-away figures.
Daria Martin
Daria Martin (born 1973) is a contemporary American artist and filmmaker based in London since 2002. In a space next to the Giacomettis, and in the same subterranean gloom, there’s a big screen onto which is projected one of her films, ‘In the Palace’. This shows four performers holding poses within a cage-like structure as the camera circles round them.
And the connection between the two artists? Well, the set Martin’s performers move in is a large-scale reproduction of Giacometti’s 1932 sculpture ‘The Palace at 4 a.m.’ Martin explains that her film started as a daydream about what it would be like to enter one of Giacometti’s surreal-era sculptures and developed from there. The eventual result was a 25-foot-high version of The Palace that she built with art-school friends and then choreographed the performers’ movements within.
Installation view of the film ‘In the Palace’ by Daria Martin (2000) (photo by the author)
The performance is accompanied by a soundtrack of birdsong and rain, which both feel rather incongruous in this dark and forbidding post-industrial setting. In fact, for me, the architectural setting itself was the star – all those slabs and columns and unfinished walls of raw concrete rather overwhelmed the changing gestures of the performers in the film, let alone the subtle angles and perspectives generated by the moving camera.
Conclusion
There are ten Giacometti sculptures here. If you’re a big Giacometti fan it may be worth the pilgrimage to Tate Modern just to see them, not in the usual antiseptic white gallery, but staged with dramatic lighting effects in these echoing catacombs. For non-fans maybe not quite worth the trek but, if you’re visiting Tate Modern anyway, definitely worth a 15-minute detour to see this atmospheric display.
Related links
- Alberto Giacometti and Daria Martin continue at Tate Modern until 17 May 2026
- Daria Martin website
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