Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs The geographies of multiculturalism: Britishness, normalisation and the spaces of the Tate Gallery Thesis How to cite: Morris, Andy (2002). The geographies of multiculturalism: Britishness, normalisation and the spaces of the Tate Gallery. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2002 The Author Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.000049e0 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk O~~Te~a Andy Morris B.A. (Hons) THE GEOGRAPHIES OF MULTICULTURALISM: BRITISHNESS. NORMALISATION AND THE SPACES OF THE TATE GALLERY Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Geography Discipline Submitted: 10" January, 2002 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the geographies of multiculturalism and their relationship to notions of Britishness through the example of the Tate Gallery. The evaluation of multiculturalism here reflects on the way it has been subject to various contentions of cultural politics and how it has operated through processes of normalisation. Central to my consideration of the politics of multiculturalism and the argument I wish to make about its normalisation, is an emphasis on the importance of critically evaluating the way cultures are understood. This critical engagement places particular importance on the tracing of multicultural histories and the ways in which Britishness has often been constructed in order to ‘cover over’ or ‘hide’ its multicultural constitution. In several ways, I also take issue with the broad argument that multiculturalism has tended to perpetuate constructions of ‘the other’ which homogenise and reify, and in doing so I examine the role of power within the normalisation process. The Tate Gallery has been used in order to articulate these issues in both an historical and contemporary context, drawing on constructions of Britishness from different periods, such as the time of the gallery’s original inception in the late nineteenth century, the period between the world wars and the recent articulations of Britishness through the political rhetoric of New Labour. As well as tracing multiple periods in time, another central issue has been to demonstrate the ways Britishness is constituted by multiple spaces. In this sense I have used the concept of networks of time-space and alluded to notions of movement, connection and circulation in articulating the dynamic nature of temporal and spatial relations. The Tate Galleries in London, Liverpool and St Ives have provided an intriguing focus of analysis in this sense, enabling me to demonstrate the strengths of thinking about the relations between the spaces of the Tate Gallery CONTENTS List of Figures iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Multiculturalism, Britishness and the Tate Gallery 17 History in the Making: evaluating linear and non-linear histones of 59 the Tate Gallery Redrawing the Boundaries: questioning the geographies of Britishness 91 at Tate Britain Rights of Passage: power, mobility and the Tate Gallery in the stones 121 of St Ives art Mapping the Constitutive Time-spaces of Tate Liverpool 161 Representing the Art of ‘the other’: multicultural normalisation and 202 the Tate Gallery Conclusion 243 Appendix 1 263 Bibliography 273 ... 111 LIST OF FIGURES .. Frontispiece Yinka Shonibare dresses Britannia (2001) 11 1.1 Tate by Tube (London Underground poster) 7 1.2 Simply River (London Transport poster) 8 1.3 Tate colour series 2 (commissioned for B&Q) 10 2.1 ‘Making waves is nothing new at the Tate’ (Tate Gallery poster) 20 2.2 ‘Bless me father, for I have sinned’ - Steve Bell 53 2.3 Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying: 54 Typhoon Coming On - Joseph Mallard William Turner (1 840) 3.1 A Man in a Black Cap - John Bettes (1 545) 62 3.2 Pictures being taken to safety following the flood at 73 The Tate Gallery, January 1928 4.1 Between the Two my Heart is Balanced - Lubiana Himid (1 991) 107 4.2 Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: 108 Canaletti Painting - Joseph Mallard William Turner (exh. 1833) 4.3 Entre les deux mon coeur balance 109 (how happy I could be with either) -James Tissot (1877) 5.1 Cottages in a Wood, St Ives -Alfred Wallis (c.1935-7) 141 5.2 The Wreck of the Alba - Alfred Wallis (1939) 145 6.1 Equivalent VI11 - Carl Andre (1966) 177 7.1 ‘Multiculturalism Ends’ - ‘Austin’ 203 7.2 Mouli-Julienne (x17) - Mona Hatoum (2000) 219 7.3 No Woman, No Cry - Chris Ofili (1998) 223 7.4 Diary of a Victorian Dandy (21.00 Hours) - Yinka Shonibare 235 (1 998) 7.5 Detail from Mr and Mrs Andrews Without Their Heads - 237 iv Yinka Shonibare (1998) 7.6 Detail from Mr and Mrs Andrews -Thomas Gainsborough 237 (1 750) 7.7 Vacation - Yinka Shonibare (2000) 23 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go first of all to my supervisors: John Allen and Steve Pile, for their encouragement, advice, inspiration and wisdom. I am also especially grateful to the Open University for their financial and administrative support and to Phil Crang for getting me here in the first place The Geography Discipline at the Open University as a whole has been an inspirational and supportive environment during the course of this thesis and I would especially like to thank Doreen Massey, Dave Featherstone and Jessica Jacobs. I am also gratehl to all those beyond the Geography Discipline who have made my research a little easier through offering me contacts, opportunities and advice, all of which have helped to strengthened my work. In particular I would like to thank Gordon Fyfe, Kevin Hetherington, David Matless, David Crouch, Kath Woodward, Emma Barker, Susan Mains and Fiona Candlin. At the Tate Gallery, I would like to thank Sandy Naime, Martin Myrone, Toby Jackson, Michael Tooby, Judith Nesbitt, Lorna Healy and Lewis Biggs for their valuable time and Robert Hewison for time, tea and an inspirational morning in his study. Researching the Tate Gallery has also been helped greatly by the support of Alan Crookham and the staff of the Tate Gallery Archive, as well as the staff of the Tate Gallery Library and the Turner Study Room. Thanks also to the staff of the St Ives Public Library Archive for their assistance and tea. Personal, motivational, financial and practical support has been generously provided by Marion and Jeremy Thorpe, Emily, Penny, Richard, Cheryl, Darren, Claire, Simon, Anna, Reuben, Rob, Jo, Ian, Emma, Dave, Liz, Rick, Jessica, Sarah, Divya, Boo and Gervase. Special thanks must also go to David Woodhead, Julia Cream, Vron Ware, Noel Campbell and John Williams for telling me I could do it. Finally I want to express my deepest gratitude to my family; to Fran and Nick and to my parents for their love, support and belief. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Ice-cream Effect On 18‘h May 2000, I travelled to Tate Britain in order to visit the gallery archive and interview Sandy Nairne, the Tate’s Director of National Programmes. Having completed these tasks in the buildings to the rear of the gallery site at Millbank, I walked round to the front of the gallery and to the main entrance in order to make use of the recently established inter- gallery bus service. This service had been set up by the Tate Gallery in order to take visitors from Tate Britain to their new gallery, Tate Modem, which had opened six days earlier on 12” May. It was a particularly hot day and I decided to leave the small bus queue of around half a dozen and buy a drink from the ice-cream van which is almost permanently situated on the pitch in front of the main gallery entrance. During my brief conversation with the ice-cream seller he commented on the good weather to which I replied ‘yes, I expect you’ll be doing a good trade today’. HISresponse to my observation was not as enthusiastically optimistic as I had anticipated. ‘Oh its gone dead, everyone goes to the new Tate now’, he replied somewhat forlornly. ‘Oh well, they’ll probably come back’, I said attempting, I suspect rather unconvincingly, to provide a hint of optimism. ‘Maybe.. .maybe’, he added, with a look of resignation. This brief exchange with a man who sells ice-creams and drinks outside Tate Britain may seem insignificant in the context of an analysis of multiculturalism, Britishness and the Tate Gallery, but there is a sense in which his observations and the concern he fostered for the future of his trade offer an insight into the relationship between these issues and the role of the Tate Gallery in the broad social, cultural and economic context of contemporary Britain. 1 For me, the most apparent issue illustrated by the ice-cream seller was that his predicament vindicated a concern which had been expressed by the Tate Gallery in terms of the effect of Tate Modem’s opening on visitor numbers at Tate Britain. This was a prominent issue raised in 1994 when the gallery began discussion groups to consider the division of the gallery into two London sites. The concern, in basic terms, was that Tate Modem would provide a more ‘glamorous’ spectacle than Tate Britain which would have to be carefully marketed if it was to avoid being seen as a comparatively dowdy, old fashioned and, as a result, less popular gallery’. The ice-cream seller’s fears seemed to be confirmed the following month when The Guardian ran an article describing the heavy downturn in visitor numbers at ‘poor old Tate Britain’ since the opening of the new gallery on Bankside (Jones, 2000a).