Protest that states the obvious
If you're going to make a political protest, why do it through art? Why choose a platform that, for all New Labour's outreach programs, continues to be fairly elitist and a minority pursuit compared with the mass media? In the real world, outside the gallery walls, good intentions get you only so far.
Tate Modern's modestly sized Media Burn brings together eight artists - American, European and British - and works from the 1970s to the present, all of which use art and the manipulation of media images or conventions to make political points.
There are some classic works, such as British artist Peter Kennard'sposter-like collages that have a pleasing, brutal directness about them.
Best is Defended to Destruction, which depicts the world with a gas mask strapped to its face, Soviet and American flags in its eye sockets and nuclear warheads sprouting from the gas filters.
Iraq has inspired a sea of similar-work. Martha Rosler's Bringingthe War Home series is a reprise of a piece she made during Vietnam in which images of the dead and the dying, soldiers and victims, are collaged into the idealised world of glossy adverts.
Fashion models trespass into the ruins of one of Saddam's palaces; bodies litter trendy interiors. The pieces make their obvious point well. Yet how effective is the manipulation of images and conventions in a culture where such tactics are the norm? Not very. There is a frontline and art is nowhere near it.
Upstairs from Media Burn, a two-room display shows a selection of the Tate's recent contemporary acquisitions for its collection. Most notable, for its size at least, is Sliding Doors by Carsten Holler, whose slides currently fill the Turbine Hall. A series of five mirrored, automatic sliding doors are set in succession in a corridor.
Glibly, they remind the viewer of their presence in a gallery and are billed by the curators as highlighting the participation of the viewer in making the artwork complete, as if participation were a cardinal virtue. Never mind if the participation leads, like Holler's corridor, nowhere.
Until 18 February. Information: 020 7887 8888.
Media Burn
Tate Modern
Bankside, Holland Street, SE1 9TG
