Today’s new exhibitions at Turner Contemporary Margate, stumbling towards some sort of review.

The main new exhibition is “Entangled: Threads & Making”, I used my usual modus operandi this is latin for, method of operation, I should point out here that at the time I learnt latin I got 4% in the exam, my school was on the edge of bankruptcy and in the process of being taken over by a boarding school that specialised in military training.

The minor exhibition is of prints by JWM Turner and I have been teasing the gallery mildly about this since December when they announced it would be called “Liber Studorium” which when translated from Latin means something like the “The Sharp Stud Book” http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/some-old-ramsgate-and-margate-views-and.html 

I got out of my problem with Latin, partly because the headmaster of the college got sent to prison for child cruelty and partly because I got diagnosed with various illnesses which resulted in a place at a special school where they didn’t do latin.

Turner Contemporary are getting out of their latin problem by slowly changing all the signs, website entries and leaflets Liber Studiorum which translates as book of studies.

Personally I blame the rocker, which is the wosoisname that is rocked on the printing plate that lead to being able to produce halftone prints.

Sorry I digress, back to my usual modus operandi, which is to. Turn up at the gallery fairly early on the first day of a new exhibition, have a fairly quick look around. Go off to the gallery café and try a bit of sketching. Go back to look at the exhibition, taking photos if allowed and if not making a few sketches, particularly of anything I remembered after the first look around. Back to the café more sketching…

Once again photography is not allowed, the down side of this is that the exhibition degenerates into everyone getting out their mobile phones and starting to take pictures while the gallery attendants rush around asking the not to. The upside would of course be the gallery attendants talking to people about the exhibits.   

As I have said here before, I am a slow thinker when it comes to art, so it will be several more visits before I have properly taken in the exhibition.

Anyway the work that struck me the most was Sky by Kiki Smith, I wasn't allowed photograph it so I have just used one of pictures of it on the internet

I did do a pen and wash sketch of part of it while I was in the gallery, just in case it wasn’t already on the internet, here it is, sketching in a busy art gallery isn’t and easy business and there is always the likelihood that you will get asked to stop using pen or brush and have to do your best with a pencil.

  

The other two I sketched were 

The first Laura Ford's penguins, so here is her video about these

And the other one Joana Vasconcelos Slash once again picture from the web

I went back to the café and painted the view from my table

I should stress here that after the previous cold snap sitting in the sunshine in this very good café sketching the view while I probably should have been at work and diving off into the exhibition made for a very pleasant day.