I went to art school and had a brilliant time but mainly watched 50s teenspoitation movies and wrote stories (fine art is a very broad church at Camberwell College of The Arts). I learned very little about contemporary art, so much so that my critical ability is similar to that of a Sun reader, in as far I catch myself judging art in terms of ‘how long did the artist take on this?’, ‘does it look cool?’ and ‘fucking hell look at how expensive that is!?!’.
Yesterday, in an effort to rectify the situation, I went to the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain- it didn’t rectify the situation at all. I enjoyed the art and almost understood some of it, but most of the time I spent there I was having fun trying to take photos without the gallery staff from noticing. I was being a total dick and I bet they get a hundred people like me in there a day trying to be funny. The only photos that came out well from under my coat were these two of Lucy Skaer’s whale skull piece:
Alex peering through the wooden boards to look at the skull.
The whale skull: it was fucking massive.
That’s it for the art then.
The other great bit about the Turner Prize was the room at the end where you were invited to leave comments on bits of paper and pin them to big cork boards that lined the room. Here are my favourite unconstructive comments:
Very good.
Yep.
Someone look her up and show her this.
(click to enlarge) Valid point.
It was 8 quid and it took about 3 minutes to walk round, you do the math(s).
Faith No More.
Comixed isn’t a word.
I liked this.
This one’s for Adam and Joe fans…
And here’s a gallery of cocks.
Poor grasp of anatomy. Freud would have a field day.
That’s it then… See you next year art fans!
