Artangel Collection Gifted to the Tate

Artangel, the London-based nonprofit, is giving nine film and video projects to the Tate, where the group will join seven earlier gifts and become the Artangel Collection. Five upcoming commissions will also be donated, for a total of 21 works. The organization’s co-directors and founders CK, Michael Morris and James Lingwood, have said that the works will be made available to museums and institutions across the UK.

Artangel, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has been behind ambitious and well-received projects like Roger Hiorns’s Seizure (2008), an apartment overtaken by blue copper sulphate crystals, Gregor Schneider’s Die Familie Schneider (2004), comprising two nearly identical flats “inhabited” by actors, and Rachel Whiteread’s House, a cast of the structure’s interior (1993). Though many of its projects are more in the public space than video typically allows, they were temporary, site-specific works.

The Artangel gift includes works by Francis Alys, Richard Billingham, Jeremy Deller / Mike Figgis, Atom Egoyan, Douglas Gordon, Bethan Huws, Cameron Jamie, Steve McQueen, Tony Oursler, Paul Pfeiffer, Gregor Schneider and Catherine Yass.

The five new commissions—in conjunction with Birmingham’s Ikon gallery and the Whitworth in Manchester—will be realized over the next three years at a cost of about $1.6 million. A quarter of the funding is from the National Lottery monies distributed by Arts Council England. Up first are Yael Bartana, whose Lying in State will debut in the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and Anri Sala and Sejla Kameric with the piece 1395 Days without Red, which will premier at the Whitworth this summer as part of the Manchester International Festival [June 30–July 17].

Above: Steve McQueen, Caribs Leap, Western Deep (film still), 2002. Commissioned and produced by Artangel. Image courtesy Artangel