(Continued from previous blog)
Obviously we know who won by now but I was determined not to like Susan Phillipz work, (I’ve never really been able to get my head around sound art) but it was better than I thought. I even sat down to listen and it made me feel calm. I always like straightforward simpleness and it worked in the space. Couldn’t be bothered though to get involved in the debate about who should have won; or if these artists are representative of art today. I did enjoy the publics’ text messages about the show though, which were shown in the corridor, and which were mostly negative. I love the way some people get really irate by art.
There was loads to see in Tate Britain; Fiona Banner, Gerard Byrne and we got stuck (and a bit scared) in an installation about religion and ideology (I stupidly didn’t take a note of the artist’s name but it was ace) and thought the stuff shown in the Art Now section was a bit pretentious.
After we’d come back from London I noted that an exhibition ‘Undone’ at the Henry Moore Institute was on its last day (I had ventured North to Leeds to see it on the 28th December but the galleries were closed!!!On a bank holiday!!! I couldn’t believe it, what art gallery closes on a bank holiday?). I had a personal interest in this as the premise of the exhibition was concerned with ‘sculpture that lies somewhere on the threshold between the made and unmade’ as I’d focused my final show for the MA on this very subject. I ended up being a bit disappointed as there didn’t seem to be any work that was situated between the made and unmade; everything seemed to be a finished piece of work. As per the blurb, the work was made from materials not usually associated with sculpture but that seemed to be the main thrust of the exhibition. The artists were only engaged critically in the materials they were using and not actually the process of making and unmaking. The making of sculpture using non traditional materials and everyday objects is not a new subject and has been addressed a few years back in ‘Unmonumental’ at the New Museum in New York. Although the majority of artists in this exhibition were from the US, the diversity of the work shown was much more exciting and inspiring. The tension, which was completely over looked here, is how do we address the notion of making/producing artworks in our consumer, throwaway society? As The Otolith group had spoken about the world having too many images, do we have too many objects already without artists making new ones?
I ventured across to Leeds art gallery to see the Northern Art prize and unlike the Turner prize, the winner has yet to be announced. In the corridor of the main galleries I heard sound like a sea shanty and thought that it was work by Susan Phillipsz again (it was very similar) but it was a collaboration by one of the nominated artists: Alec Finlay and whose work seemed to be present in all of the spaces that were used for the art prize. That was the main thing that struck me here: the amount of space/ or the number of artworks that represented the nominated artist. Both Haroon Mirza and Lubaina’s work had concise, defined spaces which encased their work. Alec Finlay had space similar to the previous artists’ but other work was positioned in other areas; the corridor and into the spaces where David Jacques’ work was. As the sound piece was in the corridor the sound spill crept into the galleries including up the stairs in the main gallery. Obviously small work needs less space than larger pieces or installations but to have one artist having more space and more artworks in a competition just doesn’t seem fair. If the prize was voted by the gallery visitors it could be seen as a Derren Brown type ploy to suggestively influence the audience just by the sheer amount of it!
