The opening of Susan Hiller’s major exhibition at the Tate Britain makes the London-based artist and her fascination with the intangible teeth marks of superstition in modern culture appropriately omnipresent in the capital.

Meanwhile, Hiller’s solo show An Ongoing Investigation, at Timothy Taylor Gallery continues Hiller’s 30-year study of subliminal psychology. With a typically heterogeneous spread of visual media Hiller exercises her kleptomaniac tendencies by reconceptualising some very familiar works by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Klein.

The psychoanalytical quality of Hiller’s work extends into the mind of the observer – through her studied restaging she re-maps modernist history, poking into our subconscious with a lightness of touch that only an anthropologist could muster.

Facing her work, it’s hard to decipher whether they are homage to a collective genealogy or parody. The Timothy Taylor show is defiantly anti-retrospective: the original works are transformed by Hiller’s strategic impersonation to become living pieces, re-acclimatized within a new century rather than stranded as relics of another era.

Susan Hiller: An Ongoing Investigation is at the Timothy Taylor Gallery from until the 5th March. A major survey exhibition curated by Ann Gallagher is currently taking place at Tate Britain until the 15th May.

Words by Julia Hobbs.

Images courtesy of Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.

Tags: Julia Hobbs, Susan Hiller, Tate Britain, Timothy Taylor Gallery