Review: Low Tide Wandering, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

Abstract

We all remember where we were when some world events happened. As news of them arrives we pause, listen, and then continue with our lives, knowing that the event will impact us, somehow. Images of the burning World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001 have become fixed in our collective memory in this way, and they have subsequently become the subject matter of several artworks, such as Hans Peter Feldman’s ‘9/12 Frontpage’ (2001), William Basinski’s ‘Disintegration Loops’ (2002) and Gerhard Richter’s ‘September’ (2005). Thomas Schütte’s ‘Low Tide Wandering’ (2001) also addresses 9/11, though it does so obliquely, in series of prints that observe the artist’s surroundings, domestic life, imaginings and exposure to the media.