Brown, Black and White Relief with Prisms
- Artist: Gillian Wise
- Date: 1962
- Medium: Plastic and acrylic paint on 2 glass prisms on hardboard
- Dimensions: support: 610 x 610 x 83 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Brown, Black and White Relief with Prisms” by Gillian Wise. The two prisms here are not ordinary decorative elements – they’re cut from submarine periscopes, a detail that immediately gives the work a sense of depth and secrecy. Around them, Wise layers sheets of industrial plastics – brown tufnel, white Perspex, black Cobex – which catch and split the light in ways that feel almost cinematic.
Wise herself said the complexity of reflections “often suggest to me a curiously poetic sensation.” Yet she insists that this poetic chaos must be “well controlled within a formal concept.” That formal discipline comes from a construction tradition that has developed in England since the 1930s, a lineage she’s proudly part of.
The piece sits on a sturdy hardboard, 610 mm square, so you can almost touch the interplay of colour, texture, and light. It’s a perfect example of how material and idea can merge to create a quietly powerful visual dialogue.
See it in person
Brown, Black and White Relief with Prisms is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
