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.