My day off yesterday and I popped into Margate to view The
Turner Contemporary’s latest commission, with the TSE label on the tin I was
expecting a bit more than baked beans inside, perhaps, the intersection of the
timeless moment would be Margate and nowhere. Never and always?
As it was the moment which is not of action or inaction,
turned out to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. I did pop into the
gallery and have another look at the works of Emin, Turner and Rodin and
speculated as to why our Tracey had left out one of the most controversial of turners erotic sketches.
It’s far too rude to put here, so here is the link to some
of his more controversial pictures http://margateturner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/test-post.html
the top one is on display in the gallery, and looking at it I thought there was
something artistically not quite right about it. It’s the bloke’s hand don’t
you know, positioned further away from the end of his arm, than what it ought
“a bee” which made me wonder if some of Turner’s erotica wasn’t drawn from
life, but was more in the nature of a record of Turner’s activities. After all
to put this sort of thing in words requires a specialist skill, which could
even have left old TS wanting.
This rather left me wondering if the next sketch down was
something in the nature of a self portrait, to use the local parlance here
abouts, was JWM Turner a bit of a shirt lifter. Looking at the shape of the
nose and comparing contemporary portraits it does seem I could be on the right
track here.
Perhaps this is something that Stephen Fry ought to have
asked Tracey Emin about, not did she think JWMT was bisexual, but why did she
leave this picture out of her selection.
The Olympic madness seems to be setting in, I tried phoning
the council to see if they were aware of their confusion about the Olympic
torch route through Ramsgate, the councils operator put me through to an
answerphone so I rang the council again and was but through to a different
answerphone. At the moment which way the torch will go through Ramsgate is
anyone’s guess. Looking on FaceBook one of my friends has posted that McDonalds
have managed to ban chips at the Olympics, see http://food.uk.msn.com/socialvoices/blogpost.aspx?post=5712d7fe-c952-426b-a338-5b8f64dadc4b&_nwpt=1&lc=1033
I have also noted back on the art theme that there is a new
art exhibition starting at The Belgian Café in Ramsgate tonight, the
Broadstairs and St Peter’s Arts Group, I will try and wander down there this
evening and report back on what it’s like.
Still on the arts front, the boat project is due to arrive
at Margate harbour Arm this evening, Friday 13th intervention by
wind (we tried sailing yesterday and there wasn’t any) means the boat will travel from Ramsgate to
Margate by road, see http://www.theboatproject.com/
I did just check the council’s tourist website http://www.visitthanet.co.uk to see if
there are any other arts events on today, this is what it says,
Commercial Break,
Lone Broadcast and Numbers at Broadstairs
what with the council being lost in Thanet I wasn’t surprised
that there didn’t seem to be any mention of the Belgian Café or the boat.
I don’t recommend further clicking, this will take you
to places like the wrong place on Google maps, and as for the other events that
are also held in this venue “The Old Lookout” obviously whoever wrote this has
either never been there or thinks it is The Tardis.
I have bunged up my watercolour of Turner here, I know the eyes are a bit odd but I think the nose is ok.
Quite strange really the council’s bizarre web presence,
both of the entries above are copied directly from the council’s leisure
website, the only two listed for today’s date, when you click on them they both
seem to be entries for the same event.
I have bunged up my watercolour of Turner here, I know the eyes are a bit odd but I think the nose is ok.
I will ramble on here.
I figured that as the exhibition started today a lot
of the people in there were probably artists so I found a fairly dark corner to
sketch from, the snag here being that I couldn’t really see what I was drawing
or what colour the paint was, the results below are, as you see, a bit on the
odd side.
Rambling on post Belgian Café, the art exhibition there is
pretty good, lots of mostly fairly small pictures and well worth going in for a
viewing.
Some photos round the harbour this evening, there must be a
lot of potential in terms of commercial opportunities from all of the windfarm
boats there now. Sorry if some of the photos are a bit blurry the light wasn’t that
good http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop712/id4.htm
The ones with the lines of coloured lights on them are achieved by changing the focal length of the lens (turning the zoom ring) while the shutter is open.
The ones with the lines of coloured lights on them are achieved by changing the focal length of the lens (turning the zoom ring) while the shutter is open.
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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.