Airport 1995

Curator: Carol Rhodes's "Airport," held here at the Tate, presents us with an aerial view, focusing on the constructed landscape around air travel. What do you make of it? Editor: It's...clinical. A strangely detached view of something so dynamic, so full of movement. It’s like a model, not a lived space. Curator: Rhodes often depicted such liminal spaces – industrial estates, outskirts of cities – commenting on land use and the infrastructure of late capitalism. Editor: The palette seems deliberately muted, drained of life. It’s the kind of place you pass through, not a place you remember fondly. The planes like toys... Curator: Exactly. Her process often involved using found images, then transforming them through paint. This distance is deliberately constructed. Editor: So, it's a commentary on the alienation inherent in our modern, hyper-connected world? Funny, how something meant to connect us can feel so isolating when you look at it like this. Curator: Perhaps she saw it as a reflection of the social structures embedded in these built environments. Editor: Maybe. Either way, it makes you think about what we build, and why. And what it costs us, sometimes.