Sunday 12 October 2014

Jeremy Deller English Magic @ Turner Contemporary Margate some attempt towards a review.

Overall the exhibition is a pretty good one, the previous one – Mondrian http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mondrian – was a pretty hard act to follow and one of the best the gallery has put on so far.

So first impressions here and please remember I am a pretty slow thinker, so I will probably have some more to say about this one when I have visited the exhibition a few times.

This is the first of the exhibitions there arranged like a one way street, it’s spread through four interconnected galleries with signs telling you which way to egress and which way to is ingress.

So you start in the room where the balcony is overlooking the pots of the heir with the amber eyes, instructions in a leaflet for all the rooms apart from this one, so big Man Who Sold the World banners and no explanation, which was fine by me as I have already made my mind up about Bowie.


The first gallery, ok to be technical The West Gallery has Bill Morris making a socialist gesture with the yacht that blocked the view.



Some Ruskin sketches on the wall which are interesting and the enviable Joe Turners of Venice, the Giardini connection.






The high point in the WG for me was the William Morris fabric printing set, the more ICTitious can of course photograph the wooden – rubber stamps, until someone comes up with a better phrase to explain them – and do a great reprint in paintshop.


I lifted the veil and took a picture, sorry about the reflections.

The next bit is a film of the English not being Johnnies, or perhaps they are. Then Bowie tour photographs. Then drawings by UK prisoners, all part of what is the political cast of this exhibition. As I said I am a slow thinker so it will be some time before I have sorted out these aspects in my mind.


You then come to the last bit in the North Gallery where you come face to face with Circus Cyaneus fine tuning the royal Range Rover.


This works up to a point and I would think it would work a lot better when it is dark outside as there is a ruddy great window over it, the effect of the light making it look a bit like it’s flying backwards.


Then you turn round and there is the Jersey tax haven 2017 riot fire mural, fantastic at the top – for me as it bends the wall – badly displayed at the bottom where it joins the floor. The colour of the mural and the floor throw the white grout between the two into high profile, tacky execution. The best way would have been to bring the floor colour up onto the mural or the mural colours onto the floor, perhaps even enhancing the slope at the bottom of the buildings to help bend the wall at the bottom too. But even a bit of grey tape over the cracked white grout would make a considerable difference, come on Jeremy, or the artists who painted the mural, or the gallery management. 

Interesting exhibition, the dark political messages got across a bit, but I think it will take me some time to relate to them.



At the end of it I stood in balcony gallery for a bit trying to line up the horizon with the tops and bottoms of the hanging vitrenes, wondered about being more educated, then went round again.               

22 comments:

  1. Looks like the Manston CPO could finally happen now that the government have intervened!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where does anyone say the government are intervening with anything?

      Delete
  2. The Government have not intervened not unless you are privy to info that is yet to be released.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The word from the council as told to the Gazette is they are hoping for more from the government not that they have assistance from the government.
    The government would also have to assist Blackpool airport with closes on Wednesday even though it has 236,000 passengers last year and has a good catchment area. It still lost £1.5 millions and no buyers can be found. Current owners 95% stake cost £14 millions in 2008, somebody tell Riveroak who seem keen to run an airport.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anon 7:31,

      Have you taken into account that Blackpool does not have a Conservative MP facing a powerful challenge from UKIP. Whereas Thanet South has Nigel Farage, no less.

      Delete
    2. Exactly John. The government have got to be seen to do something, otherwise they know that Farage will milk the failure of Manston for everything it's got.

      Delete
    3. The two Blackpool seats are both marginals, one held by labour and one help by conservatives unlike the two Thanet seats that have large conservative majorities. It wasn't long along that some people were saying that the UKIP vote would fall away due to the conservatives record in government and UKIP being a one policy party.

      Delete
    4. Anon 8:03,

      Do I take it then that you anticipate the Government rescuing both airports, just one of them or neither.

      Delete
    5. The governments mouthpiece said a lot and said nothing about cash for Mansion so I think the same will apply to Blackpool. 100 jobs at Blackpool lost but if its a choice for the government than 236,000 passengers at Blackpool against just a few thousand at Mansion demonstrates that the locals in the NW supported their airport and would be the more deserving. The 100 workers there seemed to have out performed the 150 at Mansion.

      Delete
    6. Perhaps the Labour party misspelt mansion and were actually talking about a Manston tax, not a Mansion tax.

      Delete
    7. 1:31, Blackpool may well be more deserving, but life is never fair when politics are involved. If the Tories don't save / revive Manston, then they've lost South Thanet to Nigel Farage next year. It's as simple as that.

      Delete
    8. Anon I am not sure what their intentions are re the next election, assuming the Tories don’t think they can win Thanet South, which I don’t think they think they can, then it resolves into, do they most want to keep UKIP or Labour out. Of course May is a long time in politics, so there is the anything can happen and probably will factor.

      Delete
  4. I beg your pardon 6:06 you are right they have intervened

    ReplyDelete
  5. HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT JUSTIFY BACKING A CPO ON MANSTON WITH PUBLIC MONEY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One X in the right place carries more weight than an AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG anon.

      Delete
  6. TDC confirmed this evening that Dreamland will NOT be opening in spring 2015. No Dreamland + No Superstore = No Regeneration.

    So RIP Margate too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anon I haven't heard this and can't find any confirmation of it, could you tell me where you got the information?

      Delete
  7. Ian Driver tweeted it from the meeting (read his tweets, seem like there's other problems with Dreamland too).

    Maybe we should all move to Broadstairs.

    ReplyDelete
  8. They still "expect" it to open in 2015 but at a later time now. I believe it when I see it! I share the concerns of many former Dreamland workers as well as Mike Pearce in the Gazette that there's too many of the local Turner / art crowd involved and not enough people will actual funfair operating experience.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The claims being made for the "new" Dreamland must not be allowed to pass unchallenged. Biggest pinball parlour in the world? What, more machines than the vast Paris Pinball Museum? More than the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame? The trust talks a good fight. The reality may prove somewhat different. Now even its own spokesman has admitted that the park is aimed at London "hipsters", whoever they may be. Was that really the intention when so many millions were poured into this project?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Regarding Manston, Craig Mackinlay tweeted this last night:

    "Lots going on behind the scenes @SaveManston on a daily basis. Hoping for good news very shortly."

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.