Lost in Thanet a Friday ramble about art and stuff.

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 13^th 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

Fri 13 - Wed 18 Jul 2012

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Magz Hall at The Old Look Out Gallery at Broadstairs

Fri 13 - Wed 18 Jul 2012

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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.

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 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.

I will ramble on here.

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.

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.

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.