I love art
I love art. Art saved my life. As an isolated overweight gay boy attending a tough comprehensive school in Essex in the late 70s and 80s art showed me something else. Beyond the joy of the art rooms there were trips to galleries. I clearly remember seeing work by Hockney, Judd, Caro and Naum Gabo at the Tate, I remember Anish Kapoor, Ed Allington and a huge pink tiled cone with a ring of matching pink hand-basins around it outside the Hayward Gallery. These and other artists showed me form, scale and colour. They showed me things way beyond my life. They showed me something beyond the world I saw every time I stepped out the front door. They gave me hope
Today I still want art that makes my spirit soar. Art that releases me from mundanity. Art that takes me somewhere else, that enlivens me, that challenges me. Art that makes things better. Art that believes in the future.
I want art that takes my breath away, and art makes me wonder.
Perhaps that is why I felt so flattened and disappointed by British Art Show 7. Did I miss something … ?
