Many will know the Turner prize winning artist for his photographs of hedonistic clubbers in the late 1980’s and ‘90s. In 1988, when Tillmans first began going out in Hamburg, raving and taking ecstasy, he recognised that something new was happening and felt compelled to communicate it. These peaceful, fun-loving environments offered a glimpse of a possible society: one that was communal, sexually liberated and judgement free, a utopian ideal of togetherness. “There was a huge shift through acid-house in the late ‘80s when style and class distinctions were ironed out by smiley culture and just a t-shirt and jeans”, Tillmans says. “I found that so liberating at the time. This egalitarian utopia that existed, and hopefully still exists, in a club.”
Since then, Tillmans’ oeuvre has grown to include still lifes, abstract works, landscapes and portraits, the full expanse of which is on show at IMMA in a new exhibition presciently titled Rebuilding The Future. His early club images take up a relatively small portion of the exhibition, but the same initial utopian themes prevail throughout his work. Acts of community, togetherness and solidarity, big and small, public and private, are presented across the exhibition in various contexts: a sexual-health clinic set up secretly in a Kenyan refugee camp, a palm raised in protest at a Black Lives Matter rally, two hands held tenderly across a hospital bed. “I often photograph what I want to see more of” he says in relation to his pictures of clubbing and protests, something which he sees as “a beautiful act of exerting one’s democratic rights”.