'Foreign Policy' print of a Californian cloudscape by Tacita Dean, 2019. Limited edition of 32 prints produced with The Print Studio, Cambridge using 15 layers of ink. Monochrome with white and grey clouds billowing from the bottom of the print, on a dark background. The print is an interpretation of an original chalk drawing of clouds on blackboard, sent to UK global diplomatic offices or sold by Outset Contemporary Arts to benefit the Government Art Collection. The original work was made by Dean for Sir Simon McDonald’s office in Whitehall after he became permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office in 2015.

Dean is a self-declared collector of clouds. This print forms part of an ongoing series, which places her in a long line of artists and scientists who have observed and represented the clouds, while also reflecting a specific historical moment of political and environmental crisis.

Clouds bring both dark warnings and silver linings. The original chalk drawing on blackboard was produced during the height of the Brexit referendum. Dean sees the work as representing fears over a gathering political storm – ‘I think I made it far too gentle. I think it should be way, way more angry’ – while McDonald maintains that it represents hope for a positive outcome – ‘it makes me feel better about life … it is the light breaking through that keeps me going.’ An edition of 32 (plus six Artist Proofs) have been produced as part of the ongoing TenTen Commission, launched in 2018, to add new works to the Government Art Collection for ten years. 15 of the edition have been sent to UK diplomatic offices worldwide.

Dean’s cloud collection began with her move from Berlin to Los Angeles in 2014, and experience of a very different sky. She describes encountering a ‘voluminous atomic cloud blooming’ across Sunset Boulevard ‘on pure azure without transitional haze nor other, lesser clouds for company’. She now sees California as ‘the place for clouds’, and turns to them in multiple mediums, drawing in chalk on blackboards and spray chalk on slates, finding them on postcards, painting round them, photographing and printing them.

Her work echoes research by Luke Howard to classify the clouds through meticulous visual observation and record in the nineteenth century. The Science Museum Group has a collection of his sketches on long-term loan from the Royal Meteorological Society. Dean has observed, ‘...I began collecting clouds, quite obsessively, as I began to collect the means to portray them... It is not always an easy exercise as a cloud’s identity is its mutability and it defies capture.’ That was the very problem that Howard sought to solve.