Ed Atkins at Tate Britain: A Survey of Human Uncertainty

Ed Atkins's survey at Tate Britain, London, through August 25, 2025, traces 15 years of his video work exploring the human body as a site of uncertainty. The exhibition opens with early works like Death Mask II (2010) and Cur (2010), which use gaudy stock imagery and crackling soundtracks to question authenticity and sentiment. Atkins's turn to CGI and motion-capture is exemplified by Hisser (2015), where a freckled man listlessly inhabits an IKEA-catalogue apartment until it collapses into a hole. Old Food (2019) features cascades of humans and ketchup-slathered sandwiches, while Good Man (2017) and Good Boy (2017) present tear-drenched medieval figures, suggesting empathy as a construct. The show is bracketed by Atkins's father's death from cancer in 2009: early rooms include embroidered canvases with lines from Philip Atkins's cancer diary, and the new film Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me (2024) stars Toby Jones reading the diary to a group of young people, with Saskia Reeves. The exhibition also features drawings of Atkins's head as a giant spider, an ink painting of his foot, and reproductions of anonymous reviews from Contemporary Art Daily. A room of framed Post-it notes made for his daughter during lockdown offers a tender counterpoint. The show closes with The Worm (2021), a CGI conversation with Atkins's mother.