Tuesday 2 March 2010

Turner Contemporary’s Big Event, this is not a blog post.

A timely reminder to all of you that support funding the Turner Contemporary’s day to day running costs with your council tax, business rates et al, tomorrow is their Big Event, so don’t forget to be on Margate beach at the Marine Bathing Pool tomorrow morning to get your money’s worth..

Unfortunately like most of the people who will be funding the running of this new asset for Margate I will be at work, so this is one artistic experience that I will have to forgo.

A question that one may need to answer is; is it art?

I mean for me Andy’s Coke bottle and banana -click on it to enlarge - in the picture above definitely are but does this mean that as he is an artist; Andy Walking, Andy Tired, even Andy Taking a Little Snooze is art?
What is wrong with me? Am I caught out perhaps? Musausa sapientumum fixa est in aure?

Hamish Fulton - Margate Walk from Hugh Kermode on Vimeo.

You will note that on some days more than one person was interested enough to watch the above video.

Sorry about that once I try and write banana I can’t always stop, I have just been for a walk here are the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id22.htm I am fairly certain that it wasn’t art, and fairly certain that it wouldn’t have been art, even if I was an artist, I am not so sure however that it would have been not art if it had been expensive and not unsure if this wouldn’t have been to do with who was forced to pay the bill.





Yes I am afraid that is what we are left with; lots and lots of bill, bill in fact for miles and miles.

19 comments:

  1. They've certainly lost my support now. I look forward to the building becoming a new Primark or Tesco.

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  2. John Cleese makes more sense about defending yourself against a banana wielding assailant than Hamish Fulton does. 'The King is in the altogether, the altogether' were the words of Danny Kaye's take on The Emperor's New Clothes; clearly Victoria Pomeroy hasn't read this cautionary tale from Hans Christian Anderson or was it The Grimm brothers or she would never have envisaged such utter tripe.

    Enjoyed the posting, Michael. Many thanks.

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  3. May I be the first to point out that the aforementioned 'banana' features on the cover of The Velvet Undergound and Nico - possibly th greatest and most influential rock LP of all time....

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  4. Art as a recognition of subordination to undesirable social change. Art for the subdued

    This is no new thing. Those who dreamed up the idea may believe it can be a central pillar of regeneration. But they are deluded.

    Art for a declining people is about re-directing any vestige of defiant pride into harmless pseudo-culture.

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  5. I wonder how much TDC has spent on "art"over the last few years, if you add up the turner centre 300K for the theatre 400K on airshows 300k on the viking ship
    2.5 million loss on the m&s building. i didn't know that conservatives could be so profligate with public money.

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  6. I've just been down there to protest...but there were too many people there so I bottled out!

    I was amazed to see that they moved away the St John's Ambulance first aiders from the boating pool (they even tried to make the ambulance move off the promenade but the driver told them where to go!). So much for health & safety...

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  7. Very artistic the way you captured your shadow against the lamp posts was fantastic. Is that enough sarcasm? I don't pretend to understand but then I don't understand Latin either. Banana's do not make good hearing aides my grandchildren have all tried them but they are better eaten. I am sure if this 'walk' would have gone unnoticed if done by one of the coast conservation groups, but as its labled art it screams NO ITS NOT. I must say I didn't expect it to be busy down there but peter has surprised me.

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  8. Most of the people there seemed to be well-spoken student types (including my ex-grammar school niece who I was surprised to see there - another reason why I didn't cause too much trouble). Each to there own...except when I have to help fund it & they're ignoring all local artists!

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  9. One other point: it appears that the boating pool wall has been jet-washed especially for this event to make it more safe, something that has never been done for the many thousands of young kids who play there every summer.

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  10. ahhhhhhh but Peter that is Health and safety for you

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  11. Peter or anyone else for that matter I would like some pictures of this event, as I am not able to get out and photograph it.

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  12. Don - then perhaps they should think of the health & safety of the children who play there.

    Michael - I didn't take any photos this morning (I don't have a digital camera so tend to be a bit more selective when using expensive film). There were plenty of people with cameras there though.

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  13. Jet washing, no expense spared! KCC has a bottom less pit for this project. Paul Francis Talking Politics blog on KM reported that a delegation from County Hall travelled to Bregenz in Austria last February to look at a gallery clad in a similar material to that being used on the Turner. Cost of trip nearly £1000. Now to my mind if the architect has specified an unusual material to clad the Turner, the architect must be 100 percent sure that it is up to the job. But we have been down that path before with the Turner.

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  14. I've just spoken to my niece & apparently her & many of her Canterbury College colleagues HAD to attend! Which probably explains the "success" of this event...

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  15. Peter you couldn’t really make it up could you, an elite group decide that people walking round in a circle, in a particular place at a particular time is art.

    They the force us to pay for it and students to attend the event to watch it.

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  16. Having seen the photos on the Turner web site, I just wonder what any visiting Martians would have made of it. They laughed at us peeling spuds in the seventies, but walking round in circles on a cold day takes some beating.

    According to the Turner spokeslady on Radio Kent today, its very difficult to walk round seven times keeping a meter apart and keeping track of how many laps you have done! Its a good job she is not a F1 driver. I think the men in white coats will soon be visiting Margate. What next follow the leader off Margate Harbour wall.

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  17. Maybe they can persuade people that sweeping streets & cleaning toilets is performance art.

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  18. http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2010/march/3/walking_art.aspx

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  19. 9.52 here is the link you tried to put in http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2010/march/3/walking_art.aspx if you email me I will send you instructions about how to put a link in a blog comment, I can’t do so here as the script will appear as a link.

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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.