Blah Blah Flowers

Tate Modern's Turbine Hall is a bugger to design an exhibition for, more often than not the artists have failed faced with the space. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is added to the list of miserable failures with a collection of several dozen blue or yellow bunk-bed frames and a radio that, when I listened to it, seemed to be tuned to Stereolab FM, your station for 24-hour edgy Frenchpop.

What possibly marks Gonzalez-Foerster below the other artists is that at least they created their own work for it, rather than pinching the creations of other people. I really tried to look at this as applying the same process to art as one does to remixing music but Louise Bourgeois's Spider was already pretty big, and here in person recently too. It smacks of a desperation to fill the space, which 'Maman' and 'Flamingo' do, but Gonzalez-Foerster's own work doesn't begin to address the void it has to fill.

Labels: art, Flickr, London, Tate Modern/Britain

Labels: art, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

Labels: art, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

I was in the Tate Modern Shop the other day, buying a Scanner CD. At the till I noticed that someone has produced a walking guide, for those people who like to troll around Brighton and Shoreditch, looking for Banksy graffiti in it's natural habitat. As I was buying two elderly ladies came up behind me, they also noticed the Banksy guide. "Oh Banksy, I do like his work. I think he's wonderful, don't you?" said one O.A.P. to the other.

Labels: art, artists, humour, Tate Modern/Britain

Oh good grief.

Labels: art, Tate Modern/Britain

You have either Nick Cohen trying to suggest that the Turner Prize judges supported Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds, or Brendan O'Neill, trying to suggest that Brighton & Hove Council banning the music of homophobic reggae stars is worse than anti-LGB lyrics and violence in Jamaica. O'Neill also tries to create the phrase homophobia-phobia, which is apparently an 'irrational' fear that people who want to beat you up will beat you up.

Labels: homophobia, Iraq, journalists, music, Tate Modern/Britain

The Tate have started The Great Tate Mod Blog to run alongside the 'building a huge out-of-place tower' project next to the existing building. They want suggestions for stuff that can go in and the mood visitors feel it should have.

Labels: architecture, Tate Modern/Britain

Having been let out of school early for good behaviour I headed for the Design Museum to meet up with a friend and wander round the Matthew Williamson fashion exhibition and, once we realised you bought tickets to enter the museum as a whole rather than to see a specific exhibition we decided to look at the Zaha Hadid exhibition too. I find that my feelings about Hadid's work fall neatly in to two camps, the stuff that primarily involves straight lines and sharp 'have your eye out' corners I don't like, the generally more recent stuff, using curves and sweeps, is much more to my taste. However, while she designs some lovely exteriors the interiors of Hadid buildings that were projected on one wall were pretty uniformly ghastly. They look like some kind of stylistic prison, designed to bludgeon one's senses into unconsciousness. I'm quite interested to visit such a place now, to see if it was just a trick of the projection but they all looked as though they were utterly impractical to live or work in.

I don't know whether it's just a quirk of Hadid and Williamson or whether the Design Museum generally has a policy of allowing photography. This wins them points in my book over the Tate's attitudes. They did ask for no flash photography, fair enough, but it's not like I'm going to try and pass this work off as my own, and it's daft that the Tate don't allow photography but anyone who's a decent artist can just go in and sketch whatever they like. Time to chase up that complaint I made earlier in the year that they never replied to.

Labels: "Design Museum", architecture, exhibitions, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

I read Tate Etc, I don't want to but I have no choice, they send it free to all Tate Members, I assume on the basis that no-one would actually pay for this heap of shit. I flick through it quickly, hoping against hope that there will be an article about an artist that has been written by someone who is excited by that artist and wants to show me why I should be excited by that person too. I'm looking for the art Fluxblog basically. They may not succeed, I may not think anything of that artist once I've checked the sample, but I'd at least appreciate the effort. Sadly thus far Tate Etc has failed to appeal to me every single time, pseud-art wankery spills from every page, if there was a ten page essay on a blind Jewish dwarf who worked entirely through the medium of crushed toilet paper between 1950 and 1952 I would not be able to guess whether it was a genuine article or a con by the editors. To someone like me who, like the Pope , doesn't know much about art but know what I like, it reads as deliberately exclusionary, making me feel like a dirty unwanted prole crashing the party of the bignobs.

I'm thinking of writing to the Tate requesting to stay a member but not have the magazine delivered. Whilst it goes in my recycling bin it would be yet more environmentally friendly if the paper wasn't wasted printing my copy in the first place. It's nice to see some of the companies that sell me products are starting to go paper-free, my BT bill and my electricity and power bills are now all seen through the tubes of the internets, hopefully soon all the organisations I'm a member of will take the hint and go paperless too. Why Unison or Liberty seem to think my membership of them means I want a small trees worth of literature sent to me each year is something I can't understand. Anyway, I'm getting away from my point...

When I saw my parents on Sunday for our little excursion on the London Eye my Dad passed me a copy of Art World , the first issue of which was apparently given away free with the Independent on Sunday. I'm so impressed with it that I'm going to take out a subscription, and I haven't even finished reading the thing yet. It's not dumbed down, but it's inclusionary where Tate Etc feels definitely the opposite. Both magazines have articles on artists that I've never heard of, but it's only Art World that makes me want to go out and find out more about them.

Labels: art, magazines, Tate Modern/Britain

We also visited Tate Britain for their Millais exhibition. I don't know when the last time I mentioned this was, but those of you who are my crazy Internet stalkers probably have in your fact files the information that my Mum is disabled. She can walk, but the distance varies depending on how well she's feeling and the wheelchair goes on most journeys she makes now, whether it's in to town for some shopping, or on holiday. You don't appreciate how difficult it is to get round somewhere until you're pushing a wheelchair, sure, you might have one of those infant-humans that are so popular at the moment, but they'll grow up and start using their own legs, failing that you can drown them in the bath one evening when you should be washing their hair. If Mum decides to ride, that cuts a lot of places off to us.

It does have benefits though. When we go to Tate Britain Mum's ticket has to be paid for, Dad gets in for free as her helper. And this is more common than I realised, on our holiday on the Isle of Wight a month back I found English Heritage and the National Trust give free admission to mobility impaired people's carers and/or helpers. Dad's dropped his membership of those two organisations, Mum has her members card and he gets in free pushing her. People often still move out of the way for wheelchairs, though I find pushing Mum quite fast and shouting "Get out of the way unless you want a wheelchair of your own!" works quite well also.

Pushing Mum is also quite a good way to get good views at a Tate exhibition in a hurry. Due to the limitations of the venue the first room especially is always packed, things thin out as you move a couple of rooms into whatever you're looking at. But when you're pushing a wheelchair that does encourage people to move around you, so you get bona views of the pics (except for the prick who, after we positioned ourselves to his right, decided to step to his right to look at a painting, coming within centimetres of elbowing my Mum in the face). However, halfway through the exhibition Mum said she wasn't always able to see the pictures very well, the spotlights the gallery use to illuminate the portraits was bouncing off the glaze on some of them and into my Mum's eyes. I'm not sure what we can do there, they use the lights to show the pictures at their best, but I suspect that they didn't consider what the effect would be at someone looking from waist rather than head height. I'm looking for an address to write to, not to complain, but to bring it to their attention. When you're at a busy exhibition you don't have the option of stepping back and trying to look from a different angle, everyone else gets in the way then.

Labels: disability, personal history, Tate Modern/Britain

It's nice to see the Tate continuing it's interesting tactic of putting artwork in a public space that invites the public to sue them, there's the woman who hurt herself on the slides last year so how long before someone finds they can't get their foot out of a hole they shouldn't have inserted it in in the first place, or who claims they tripped?

I'm artistically illiterate so I have no idea how this work 'prompt[s] a broader consideration of power's divisive operations as encoded in the brutal narratives of colonialism', it instead reminds me of visiting Greenwich yesterday and the Royal Observatory, where the line that marks the Prime Meridian lies. The line of Shibboleth shifts, turns and runs all over the place (though rather annoyingly mostly down the one side of the hall), a more rough and ready Prime Meridian for something other than trade.

And how well does this make use of the space in the Turbine Hall? Well, for me, as it digs down, rather than rising up, it is again exploring negative space, in the same way as Rachel Whiteread's underwhelming collection of white boxes from a few years back. But, just as her display did nothing to address the space involved (and arguably no exhibitions since the Giant Sun have achieved this), so this also underwhelms. Presumably for safety reasons the crack mostly runs down the one side of the hall, doing nothing with the rest of the space. This could have been done anywhere else, which is a shame but still, following it from the top down to the bottom, once it becomes wide enough to see into it's reminiscent (geek alert!) of flying the X-WINGs down the trench in Star Wars, which is enough for me to like it.

Labels: art, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

Labels: art, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

Labels: art, Flickr, Tate Modern/Britain

The Tate have a Flickr group to accompany their current photography exhibition at Tate Britain. They are asking for a maximum of four photographs on one of the four themes of the exhibition, portrait, documentary, still life or landscape.

Labels: Flickr, photos, Tate Modern/Britain

Spent the morning on buses, from Southwark to Pimlico, then up to Camden. I can only really put up with London buses outside of rush hours and by giving myself plenty of time to travel small distances.

Popped in to Tate Britain in the middle and saw the State Britain exhibit by Mark Wallinger, which has been nominated for the Turner Prize. It's a recreation of the first anti-war protest of Brian Haw, still camped out down the road in Parliament Square.

I managed to take one photo before an official told me off. Normally I wouldn't dream of taking photographs in the Tate, I can't get sufficiently worked up for the whole 'holding art for the public' argument. However, it strikes me as intensely funny and an underappreciated part of the artwork that, copied as it was from items confiscated as they were from someone who was breaking no laws and exercising his legal right to protest, it is someone else's property and I'm not allowed to take photos of it with my crappy little camera.

The bus to Camden went around the back of Parliament Square where, at the front of which, the real deal keeps going strong. I wonder what his plans are for the post June the 27th era?

Labels: art, exhibitions, Flickr, Government, Iraq, London, SOCPA, Tate Modern/Britain, Tony Blair

If you're feeling a bit blue this morning then here's something to cheer you up: The Daily Mail make a hilarious 'modern life is so shit even five year olds are trying to commit suicide' report. You really should read this, it's great stuff. It's a mangling of facts that one of our national papers can feel proud for promoting.

And, rather unsurprisingly, the Tate is being sued by someone who whacked her wrist on the slides at Tate Modern.

"I am claiming for the loss of facility of my right hand ... it's been a real problem," she said. "I couldn't type, write or drive for two months. I travel extensively with work but I couldn't even carry a suitcase. Only now, three months on, am I getting back to normal."

Presumably this means that two months ago she wasn't able to sign the writ. I'm not sure why she wasn't able to carry a suitcase with her unpranged hand.

Labels: children, Daily Mail, news, newspapers, suicide, Tate Modern/Britain

The Japanese view of transgenderism.

The Guardian talk to Gilbert and George ahead of their Tate retrospective.

The Pursuit of Emptiness by John Perry Barlow. You'll be happy if you don't consider it your right to be happy. I would have thought it was obvious but then some people seem to think poking an ape with a stick is a good idea.

I am: Olaf Stapledon Standing outside the science fiction "field", he wrote fictional explorations of the futures of whole species and galaxies.

Which science fiction writer are you?

An interesting and thought-provoking video by an autistic woman on personhood and how those who differ from the norm are often viewed as non-people. [via BoingBoing]

Google take steps to stop Googlebombs from going off. Does that mean the charmless bigots are safe? (I also note that the charmless bigots have an opinion on the latest round in the never-ending saga of the death of a Sloaney some nine years ago. I'm surprised that the charmless bigots appear to have ignored completely the 'gay adoption' story.) [first link via Slashdot]

Labels: art, autism, Gilbert and George, Google, philosophy, Tate Modern/Britain, transgenderism

Well that was a fun weekend.

On Friday I finished the working week hearing that I'd been succesful at my interview and was being offered a post as an Assistant Library Manager somewhere else. Now I'll be officially empowered to be nasty to other members of staff rather than doing it on a pro. tem. basis.

Saturday I went in to town, headed down to Tate Modern for the first time in ages. The queues for the slides were all too long and boring so I had a nose around the David Smith exhibition. I knew nothing about Smith, hadn't even heard of him before I saw the exhibition, but I did like his work.

After that I was off to The George on Borough High Street to meet C and S. We had to sit outside but the freezingness was mitigated by some tall freestanding storage heaters, though the table of drunk misogynist city-bores did try to steal them all to stand round their table. One of them started screaming into his mobile at his 'C*nt' of an ex-girlfriend and they melted away into the night.

We had something to eat at a Wagamama's and then saw S off on the train home, then C and I struggled to get up to Kentish Town. From Blackfriars it shouldn't be that difficult but the Sutton-Bedford trains were playing silly buggers and a fifteen minute train journey became a fifty minute journey with a thirty minute wait on the Kings Cross Thameslink platform for a train that wasn't going fast out of London.

While I don't know the specifics of where I will be working yet it will involve some level of commuting, so I will get to sample the pleasures of delays, cancellations and random BR and Tube related maliciousness.

We eventually made it to The Oxford, which I hadn't visited since it had changed it's name from the Jorene Celeste. I was commended on my new job and my tremendous hair and then I settled down to the prospect of trying to find some beer that I liked to drink. I had to give up on that very quickly and make do with Kronenberg and Carlsberg, donkey-piss brands both. We were assembling to cheer the brief visit of a friend of ours that had moved to Singapore several years ago. Beer was drunk, cigarette health warnings were ignored and it was declared that Fidel Castro was guilty of many crimes but surely the worst was to allow the Manic Street Preachers to play in Havana.

I headed home at midnight while most other people decided to buy more wine and drink at someone's flat nearby. I got a call around lunchtime from C who had woken up to find herself in Mr Singapore's hotel room with no memory of how she got there. We reconvened in Islington where we had delicious and cheap vegetarian Indian food (at the Indian Vegetarian Bhel Poori House IIRC) then we headed towards Kings Cross. I popped in to the British Library to have a look at their London: A Life in Maps exhibition. It was interesting to see both the development of the town (Tottenham Court Road was still bordered by fields in the 1700s) in to the city but also the increasing detail in the maps as it becomes more of a necessity for people to find their way around rather than the well-off to know which estate is which. However, whoever lays out this exhibitions really needs to be poked with spoons. I don't know if there are permanant walls down in that space that cause problems but starting the exhibition right slap bang at the bottom of the stairs into the room means that as soon as you have people coming in they are all crammed together trying to read the notices and see the first exhibits, roman maps of what would one day be 'Londinium'. Then, within the exhibition space there are several times when the path splits and the visitor is given no guidanec as to which way to go. These are little niggles though, the old maps are beautifully preserved (I remember some of them from what I think was a similar exhibition at the British Museum a few years back) and there's nothing more fun than scouring old maps looking for the road you live on or places you visit today.

After that I rejoined C in the Pizza Express across the road where we sat across from Vanessa Feltz. After the glacially slow service we walked up to Euston and caught the train back to my den of iniquity where we whiled away the rest of the day watching MASH repeats and looking for Captain Jack vids on YouTube.

Labels: British Library, exhibitions, London, personal history, restaurants, sculpture, Tate Modern/Britain

Spent the afternoon at the Holbein exhibition at Tate Britain with my parents. I didn't see anything that blew me away, there were a lot of sketches and that famous one of Henry the Eighth looking like a brick shithouse that could give Tony Soprano a run for his money. What interested me more was the guy I was following around for part of the exhibition. He was short and his face was a massive swirl of colourful tattoos. His face was a lot more interesting than those that Holbein had painted.

5:00 pm and the Northern Line train emerges from the tunnel as it approaches Golders Green station. The sky is dark already. Welcome to winter.

Labels: art, Tate Modern/Britain