BMW Tate Live presents Paulina Olowska. “The Mother An Unsavoury Play in two Acts and an Epilogue”

BMW Tate Live continues its programme in 2015: On 14 – 27 September, a gallery in Tate Modern’s collection displays will be transformed into a ‘domestic interior’ – a theatre setting which functions as an installation, part of a new commission by artist Paulina Olowska who combines visual arts, theatre and performance. BMW Tate Live is a longterm partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space. The BMW Tate Live programme explores the diverse ways in which artists approach live performance in the 21st century, whether in the gallery or online.

The installation conjures a semblance of domestic space within Tate Modern’s “Poetry & Dream” display which will be decorated with wallpaper, hand-painted murals and furnished with wardrobes, tables and chairs. These furnishings will sit alongside paintings by artists such as Henri Matisse, Dora Carrington, Pablo Picasso and André Derain. During the day the installation will function as part of the free displays, while in the evening it will become the stage for a new theatre play devised by Olowska.

Based on “The Mother An Unsavoury Play in Two Acts and an Epilogue” by avant-garde Polish artist and playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Olowska’s performance will portray the dysfunctional relationship between Janina Eely, a matron, and Leon Eely, her good-looking and clean-shaven son. Two professional actors will play the role of the mother and the son, while Olowska’s friends and collaborators take on characters including the maid, the prostitute, the aristocratic party boy and the suspicious individual. The story takes place in a bourgeois setting in which hallucinations, schizophrenia, alcoholism, madness and drug addiction turn into surrealist mayhem. Performances of the play will take place at Tate Modern on 21, 23 and 25 September 2015.

Working across painting, performance, installation and also curating, Paulina Olowska’s work often focuses on forgotten figures of feminism, minor histories and popular aesthetics, quoting fashion photography, agitprop posters, graffiti, periodicals and signage. She has recently shown solo projects and exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Basel; Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and she is the Aachen Art Prize recipient for 2014.

BMW Tate Live: Paulina Olowska is curated by Catherine Wood and Juliette Rizzi, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern and produced by Judith Bowdler, Production Co-ordinator, Tate Modern.

BMW Tate Live 
BMW Tate Live is a long-term partnership between BMW and Tate that features innovative live performances and events including live web broadcast, in-gallery performance, seminars and workshops. BMW Tate Live aims to reach an international audience through new forms of art, addressing audiences changing needs, tastes and interests in art. The initiative creates a new space for collaboration and a programme that encompasses performance, film, sound, installation and learning – areas where artists can take greater risks and experiment freely. The programme investigates transformation in all its guises and aims to provoke debate on how art can affect intellectual, social and physical change. More information at www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive 

About BMW’s Cultural Commitment

For more than 40 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in over 100 cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of its long-term commitment on modern and contemporary art, jazz and classical music as well as architecture and design. In 1972, three large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group's Munich headquarters. Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Zubin Metha, Daniel Barenboim and Anna Netrebko have co-operated with BMW. The company has also commissioned famous architects such as Karl Schwanzer, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au to design important corporate buildings and plants. In 2011, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a global initiative of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Guggenheim Museum and the BMW Group celebrated its world premiere in New York. The BMW Group takes absolute creative freedom in all the cultural activities it is involved in for granted – as this is just as essential for groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business. 

Further information: www.bmwgroup.com/culture and www.bmwgroup.com/culture/overview