This exhibition focuses on Tillmans’ multifaceted approach to image-making, featuring new and previously unseen works from the mid 1980s to the present day. One or the latest series is a multi-part work Old Street (parallax), 2019, made whilst circling the landmark East London roundabout. The work takes its title from the term used in astronomy to measure the distance from the earth to a star through the parallax angle.

The angle is determined from the difference in the position of an object over a period of time from a given viewpoint. The work records the shifting of architectural layers from the inward, as well as outward-looking perspective of the orbit.

Also within the show are new Greifbar works, created in the darkroom without negatives or a camera, but purely through the manipulation of light on paper. These works mark a shift in the series by employing a new duo chromatic palette.

Tillmans began using photocopies in the late 1980s, understanding the possibilities they allowed him for making pictures and has since developed a uniquely inventive approach to the medium.

He presents a grouping of photocopy works including unique colour, and black and white copies, as well as inkjet prints of enlarged photocopies. Prior to embracing the possibilities of the photocopy the artist worked with drawing and painting, examples of which are also on view, and represent some of the earliest examples of the artist’s works.

Throughout his career Tillmans has been challenging the potentiality of making pictures. His work has epitomised a new kind of subjectivity in photography, pairing intimacy and playfulness with social critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies.

Through his seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies, he has expanded conventional ways of approaching the medium, and his practice continues to address the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world.

Born in 1968 in Remscheid, Germany, Tillmans studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in Bournemouth, England, from 1990 to 1992. In 2000, he was the first photographer and first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize, from Tate, London.

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