Ross and I finished what has turned out to be quite an arty week with a little burst of activity.
On Sunday morning, we went back to the Tate to re-visit the Biennial exhibition there and still loved Clare Langan's video work (which seems to me richer and more beautiful on a second viewing) and Juan Fernando Herrá's lead rocks (which are again beautiful, poignant and arresting). From there, we went on to the Walker Art Gallery for the John Moores Exhibition.
There was an audience participation exercise which asked gallery visitors to select or draw their favourite competition entry. I would have found that very difficult as I had no favourite. I did feel that one entry was more representative of my reaction, however. It was by Colin Lowe and Roddy Thomson and was entitled No 58, 100 Reviews (3) Alberta Press and was silk-screened text in acrylic paint on a matte background on canvas. The text was of a review of one of their previous gallery shows. The first and last sentence went thus...
This is the type of art made by people who do too much teaching in art schools (or what used to be art schools but which are now mostly university departments)... Maybe first year students would find this really deep stuff, but I doubt it.
That really summed up my experience of the show as a whole. I know the illustration above is unreadable but, believe me, you don't experience any the less for that.
It was a similar story with the parade of blobs, blotches and painted boxes elsewhere in the room.
And the doodles and the squiggles though the plant was nice but unexciting.
There was lots of textual stuff as well. The one on the right hand side won
the competition - probably because it used the work "Fucker" in the title and
was pretending to be an homage to Andy Warhol.
I really felt that the people exhibiting should try and get out more. Particularly, they should go to the International Exhibition at the Tate and at Pleasant Street Board School. I wouldn't say that I like all of the exhibits there by any stretch of the imagination but, at least, they feel as thought they have a link to the outside world and relate to it in some way. What is on the walls of the Walker is self-absorbed pap.
And, in case you think that those are simply the words of a middle aged reactionary, Ross felt the same.
Luckily, we had another event at the opposite end of the artistic spectrum to
leaven all of this deep and intellectual thought. We attended a preview of the
new Harry Potter film at our local cinema. Basically, it was a fabbity as the first
film and I would urge children at every stage of their life story to take time out
and go and see it.
I'm not going to try and single out individual performances or special moments. I'm just going to accept that I enjoyed it.
We've also completed our work on the garden. Ross painted up one of the outside windows whose paint was cracked and pealing. And I did some more sanding in the kitchen.
What an excellent weekend.
At the end of the last posting I was wondering whether or not to spoil a perfect score at Free Cell.
I didn't.
