JILL TATE'S 'SELF-FULFILMENT' AT SEVENTEEN GALLERY

Jill Tate's Self-Fulfilment being a winter show felt important, because when I got into Seventeen Gallery I was already wanting more light. On route to Haggerston, the day was gearing towards grey torpor. So, inside, the warmth from Tate's paintings hit harder.

Installation photography courtesy of gallery

Self-Fulfillment is the artist's second solo with Seventeen, the first being Ground Truthing in 2024, similarly done in a monochrome of terracotta, mixed by Tate from natural pigment and linseed oil. As soon as I made it to the gallery, her palette was doing work: my sensory memory went to things dug up and scraped with a small brush. Familiar in its old associations, terracotta belongs to things buried or preserved. Objects mute.

When I read the top of the exhibition handout — the observer of a quantum system cannot observe without drastically disturbing what he observes, and thus changes it — I was surprised. Being relatively new to Tate's work, the context of quantum physics didn't resonate. Sometimes quotes on exhibitions feel like an afterthought, like a plaster for a cut thumb, and I'm suspicious. But as I walked through, it was clear Tate's paintings are directly about observation and disturbance.

Installation photography courtesy of gallery

Not that I can talk with any certainty about quantum physics, but there is a long standing hunch about measurement in the field, ultimately, asking if measurement can ever be neutral. This has bled into philosophy and science studies discourse. The exhibition quote, from physicist Federico Faggin, posits that observation isn't a neutral act. Measurement doesn't capture phenomena happening in a pristine vacuum. Actually, our presence affects the measurement of phenomena. In front of Tate's paintings, we are alone, yes. There are no figures or faces, but we're involved with the objects. Like the quantum theory referred to in the text, it feels like the objects are performing for us, the viewer is in relation with them, and, consequently, the silence of the works is overturned. The paintings start to get loud with potential outcomes.

Jill Tate, More or Less, 2026

Things hang in the balance in her work. And, it's unclear how such balance is achieved and what forces are acting on her objects, a combination of light, gravity, weight, maybe something else. Something more eerie. Are my eyes keeping that spoon hanging on the edge? If I turn away will that pile of boxes collapse? Are these objects somehow staying upright for me? The composition of her paintings show things at quiet tipping points, over-loaded bins, balancing spoons, boxes stacked, stillness right before movement. Like breath being held, the cups are holding court in the bin, but one more on top, might send them all reeling. I enjoyed her calm object-only world, overlaid with points of tension. Something satisfying about seeing objects poised for fall or a shift. I felt, maybe, more aware of my own feet and my own balance in the process.

From left to right: Going nowhere, 2026, Where next, 2026, Dual nature, 2026

The paintings are seamless and without abrasion, full of lines, shadows and smooth objects. This smoothness elsewhere can feel boring, even, insidious. Such seamlessness is mutual to Apple, plastic, Skims, neo-liberal flatness. But, it really feels like Tate's work does not derive from any present fetish for the seamless experience, for the maxxing of everything. Actually, it's just that the palpable tension is coming from elsewhere: tension between the objects and the viewer, which the use of monochrome palette centers even more, akin to sculptural, or photographic approaches. Scattered through the paintings are panels of light, corridors, door frames, pillars in repeat. These felt both limitless and claustrophobic, and a little bit lonely: a testament to Tate's capacity to generate scenarios resembling controlled experiments and implicate the viewer in their atmosphere.