The Bell
- Artist: Wolfgang Tillmans
- Date: 2002
- Medium: Photograph, colour, chromogenic print, on paper
- Dimensions: image: 2100 x 1450 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “The Bell” by Wolfgang Tillmans, created in 2002 as a colour chromogenic print on paper. In the image Tillmans shows a stainless‑steel trough urinal, littered with deodoriser blocks and cigarette butts, inside what used to be a pub in King’s Cross, London. That pub, known as The Bell, was a key gay gathering place from 1982 until it closed in 1995. Tillmans first visited in 1986 and later returned with a camera to capture the space as a memorial to that vibrant queer community. He was struck by the striking contrast between the vivid, almost surreal reflections on the metal and the raw, often disgusting reality of the urinal itself. The work invites us to consider beauty in unexpected places and to remember places that shaped a community.
See it in person
The Bell is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, 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.
