The role of the media in disseminating such information is obliquely addressed in Mark Titchner's 'Ergo Ergot'. A screen displays a headache-inducing flicker of Rorschach ink blots interspersed with dates over the last seven years when, according to the human rights group Liberty, the UK government has passed legislation that threatens civil liberties. The aggravating humming noise that fills the room is supposed to lure one's brain into a trance-like state. Titchner's other installation, 'How to Change Behaviour (Tiny Masters of the World Come Out)', takes another sidelong look at belief systems and authority. A huge poster declaims 'Tiny Masters of the World Come Out!' in the manner of Titchner's previous work commissioned by Platform for Art for Gloucester Road tube station. Set alongside this is a set of rickety apparatus, including what looks like a cross between a wooden pulpit and a teleportation device. Electrical cables and crystals proliferate, as well as hand-carved slogans ('out of darkness into light', 'we take up the task eternal') taken from Trade Union banners. Titchner's bricolage recombines found texts with elements of fringe spiritual and new-age belief systems, and although he might present these ideas 'without mockery or cynicism',² as the catalogue claims, I found the effect rather underwhelming.

Rebecca Warren's vitrines also juxtapose found objects, but in a much more powerful and poetic manner. These roughly made boxes share the deliberately thrown-together aesthetic of the rest of her sculptural practice, and contain discarded lumps of clay, odd hairs, scraps of card and sawdust. Warren situates her work in an artistic and sculptural tradition, creating a dialogue with (male) forebears such as Degas and Rodin, and an unmentioned influence for this vitrine series must surely be Beuys. In an interview with Carl Freedman, Warren has stated she is 'interested in the way something can be perceived as having a ritual or religious value'³ and, indeed, her carefully placed twigs, pompoms, cherry stones and other detritus suggest a ritual drama, lit by small bent tubes of coloured neon.

Also on show are some new works in clay, which, in a move away from her earlier overly sexualised female forms, are squat pieces not modelled on the human body. Closer inspection reveals the same dynamic, rough technique and protruding body parts though. Warren is also exhibiting five pieces in bronze, cast from clay originals and then modified and re-cast. These return to her explorations of female form, extrapolating from Degas's 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen' (1880-81). An engagement with bronze as material is evident: in places the rubber from the mould has been left stuck to the sculptures, and in other places Warren has covered the bronze in paint.

In a short film shown at the end of the exhibition, Warren talks about trying to allow the work to define itself, and her methods for achieving this seem to include working and revising her malleable material at speed. The painter Tomma Abts appears to have the same goal, but reaches it by a very different route. She has given all 11 paintings in her exhibition personal names as titles, an indication of how she wishes each finished piece to have its own emotional charge, even personality. The painting as person might be a fruitful analogy, given Abts's technique, which involves laying down a ground of bright acrylic colours (genetic make-up) and then covering or revealing them with smooth layers of oil paints (life experiences). The paintings themselves are formally controlled and resolutely abstract, with the lines of their earlier incarnations visible under the final colour planes. The catalogue quotes Abts as calling the pictures 'a concentrate of the many paintings underneath',⁴ and these hidden depths are what give her small canvases such power.

Abts's restraint contrasts with the monumental video piece that represents Phil Collins's work. He is showing 'The return of the real/gercegin geri donusu', a piece originally commissioned for the Istanbul Biennial in 2005. He continued his explorations of contemporary culture's fraught love affair with reality TV by employing the director of a Turkish makeover show to interview 15 Turkish volunteers, all of whom had appeared on TV shows. In a darkened room, the head shots of the director and interviewee are projected onto opposite walls, as if they are facing each other. Prompted by the director, the interviewees retell the stories of their often harrowing lives for a full hour, digressing and repeating themselves. As a viewer, one gets drawn into the drama, almost forgetting that their stories have become a form of entertainment again. Collins's other move has been to transpose his production company's office to the Tate for the duration of the exhibition, so that visitors can watch his team go about their days of research and phone calls. It seems that Collins's interest lies in exposing the invisible contexts of television: the stories that were not fully told in a few minutes on air, or the months of background work that go in to a show.  

James Wilkes

References
1. Barber L. 'How I suffered for art's sake'. The Observer, 1 October 2006.
2. Boase G. Mark Titchner. In: Boase G, Carey-Thomas L, Stout K. Turner Prize 2006. London: Tate Publishing, 2006.
3. Freedman C. Interview. In: Ruf B (ed). Rebecca Warren. Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2005: 24.
4. Carey-Thomas L. Tomma Abts. In: Boase G, Carey-Thomas L, Stout K. Turner Prize 2006. London: Tate Publishing, 2006.