Ruin Lust, Tate Britain

In the visual arts you’re never more than 10 paintings away from a ruin – at least that’s starting point for Ruin Lust: the Tate Britain’s inspired new take on the existential fascination that decaying structures have held for visual artists since the beginnings of collective memory. 

The show spans 100 ruin-themed works from JMW Turner to John Constable to Tacita Dean, and it’s by all accounts the largest and broadest exhibition ever devoted to the subject. But crucially this is no straightforward thematic retrospective: it’s a study of how, from the 18th century to the present day, forwards-looking artists have used the trope of apocalyptic decay as a vehicle for divergent, dystopic visions of our future. 

Turner’s Tintern Abbey: The Crossing and Chancel, Looking towards the East Window (1794) is one of the standout pieces of the genre: an awe-inspiring meditation on nature’s unstoppable reclaiming bent. Look out too for John Latham’s Five Sisters Bing (1976) – a joint look at the decline of land sites and culture in Mid- and West Lothian.

There are also some true, rarely-seen gems to unearth here. Our favourite is Gustave Doré’s 1872 engraving The New Zealander, which depicts a Maori traveller looking out onto ruined London from one of the erstwhile stubs of London Bridge. Beautifully detailed, it visually represents the prolific 19th century preoccupation with the New World as the imminent successor to the old Empires, as well as the idea that the downfall of its economic centres would be witnessed by explorers from the New World in the same way that voguish English travellers of the day were visiting and studying the ruined classical cities of Arabia.

Two rooms dedicated to the films of Tacita Dean and Gerard Byrne are proof that today’s visual artists have nowhere near exhausted the trope – even if they do approach it obliquely. Dean’s film Kodak (2006) is a study of the decay of 16mm film and other lost imaging techniques, while Byrne’s video installation 1984 and Beyond (2005-2007) is an utterly absorbing re-enactment of a 1963 Playboy discussion on what the world would look like in 1984. Riots, the spectre of nuclear war, and the erosion of traditional sexual morals are all the order of the day in a discussion of socio-political disintegration which still preoccupies society today.