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Pretentious Twaddle
Apr. 18th, 2006 12:23 amWalking through Deanbridge to get to the Gallery of Modern Art, it struck me how easily I forget what a beautiful city we live in. This place is the stuff of fairytales. Grand houses that resemble medieval castles, turrets and all. Tudor cottages, victorian bath houses, terraces of stables, and mansions topped with bizarre leaded glass domes. This mishmash of architectural styles crisscrossed by almost rural roadways and wynds affording glimpses into this time-frozen world.
The gallery itself offered a rather bizarre experience.
Several large and rather perplexing installations greet visitors as part of a temporary exhibition entitled "Selective Memory." It strikes me that it's not really necessary to comprehend these works to appreciate them. They are more about the feelings they evoke in viewers than conveying meaning. And it's hard not to be affected when walking around the giant sculptures of glass and barbed wire, or the intimidating assemblage of found art objects awkwardly mixing the new and the ruined. The slightly erie sense I got in Cathy Wilkes' installation, standing "eye to eye" with a mannequin in whose face had been replaced with a paint splattered canvas has stuck with me.
My favourite of the three though had to be Alex Pollard's sculptures of artists tools forming into animal and human shapes. Some of the sculptures depicted conflict; either figures fighting or hands creating and undoing each others' work. It struck me as a bit of a mocking decision to model these tools in clay rather than use the real things, as if he wanted to play with our perception. Then I noticed bends and waves in the paint brushes and rulers. I'm not implying that trickery was the intention here, just that by building these scenes out of recognizable objects, the artist is taking advantage of our habit of accepting things we know by sight and filling in the gaps.
I have to say, a lot of what people class as "modern art" doesn't work for me. Maybe when classical art was modern, a lot of it didn't work either and has since been discarded. On the other hand, plenty did work for me, especially the collages of Joe Tilson that evoked an almost panicking sensation of frustration and disquiet at the conflicts depicted. Another piece that I liked was a large photographic print by Andreas Gursky, capturing parallel lines and regimented angles in such a way that they dominated his photograph of a hotel lobby, to the extent of diminishing all other details and making them appear artificial.
Poor Tracy Emin didn't come off so well. I could see what she hoped to achieve in her scribbled ink prints, but the outcome just wasn't really there. The maddened energy evident in her work is impressive, but the childish scrawl could have come from anyone with a similar background. Maybe that's what people see in her work. Or maybe not. "Oh look, it's a giant cock with scribbles," exclaimed one female visitor. "And another," laughed her friend.
"Challenging" is maybe the word for what I saw today. I think I'll have to do this properly now. That's two down. I just have the Dean Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery to go.
~
I now have a MySpace. I won't be blogging there.
I'm skint until Thursday, but I will be at AASoc tomorrow, and hopefully the pub afterwards. Probably drinking Irn-Bru.
Zoga is open again, so I won't be stuck for my Turkish coffee and baklava fix.
The gallery itself offered a rather bizarre experience.
Several large and rather perplexing installations greet visitors as part of a temporary exhibition entitled "Selective Memory." It strikes me that it's not really necessary to comprehend these works to appreciate them. They are more about the feelings they evoke in viewers than conveying meaning. And it's hard not to be affected when walking around the giant sculptures of glass and barbed wire, or the intimidating assemblage of found art objects awkwardly mixing the new and the ruined. The slightly erie sense I got in Cathy Wilkes' installation, standing "eye to eye" with a mannequin in whose face had been replaced with a paint splattered canvas has stuck with me.
My favourite of the three though had to be Alex Pollard's sculptures of artists tools forming into animal and human shapes. Some of the sculptures depicted conflict; either figures fighting or hands creating and undoing each others' work. It struck me as a bit of a mocking decision to model these tools in clay rather than use the real things, as if he wanted to play with our perception. Then I noticed bends and waves in the paint brushes and rulers. I'm not implying that trickery was the intention here, just that by building these scenes out of recognizable objects, the artist is taking advantage of our habit of accepting things we know by sight and filling in the gaps.
I have to say, a lot of what people class as "modern art" doesn't work for me. Maybe when classical art was modern, a lot of it didn't work either and has since been discarded. On the other hand, plenty did work for me, especially the collages of Joe Tilson that evoked an almost panicking sensation of frustration and disquiet at the conflicts depicted. Another piece that I liked was a large photographic print by Andreas Gursky, capturing parallel lines and regimented angles in such a way that they dominated his photograph of a hotel lobby, to the extent of diminishing all other details and making them appear artificial.
Poor Tracy Emin didn't come off so well. I could see what she hoped to achieve in her scribbled ink prints, but the outcome just wasn't really there. The maddened energy evident in her work is impressive, but the childish scrawl could have come from anyone with a similar background. Maybe that's what people see in her work. Or maybe not. "Oh look, it's a giant cock with scribbles," exclaimed one female visitor. "And another," laughed her friend.
"Challenging" is maybe the word for what I saw today. I think I'll have to do this properly now. That's two down. I just have the Dean Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery to go.
~
I now have a MySpace. I won't be blogging there.
I'm skint until Thursday, but I will be at AASoc tomorrow, and hopefully the pub afterwards. Probably drinking Irn-Bru.
Zoga is open again, so I won't be stuck for my Turkish coffee and baklava fix.
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