“Entangled: Threads & Making” another crack at Turner Contemporary and their latest exhibition, this time with photos and more of the watercolour from Turner Contemporary of the Flat Iron, Dreamland, Arlington House

I had a go at this one last week, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/todays-new-expeditions-at-turner.html and I went over to Margate today to buy some books which took longer than I expected so I decided to have lunch in the gallery café.

I got the best seat for winter painting and as there was no sun was able to paint looking straight at where the sun was going to be.

So I will deal with my watercolour first.   

This is how far I got with it

I had started it on a previous occasion when the sky was blueish and the tide was in

most of today's process is best described as trying to hack Arlington House out of the paper with a sable brush. Honest the painting is already in the paper all I have to do is release it and while the flat iron is easy Arlington isn't.

Next the exhibition photos, sorry bout the quality, if I had known that photography was now allowed I would have taken a decent camera, the lighting in Turner Contemporary is strange, not the led lighting one would expect but something archaic I think.

I did copy the catalogue also done badly with phone here is the link https://goo.gl/photos/mqW7V8Fy5Ggwttv46

So criticism wise, we have just a had a star exhibition at Turner Contemporary, for me selecting 120 of JWM Turner’s paintings and displaying them well enhances my understanding of Turner. This next exhibition about 120 works by about 50 different artists leaves me confused about who’s who and what the exhibition signifies as a whole. I suppose this is more my fault than the expedition’s the key problem being that I know so little about contemporary fabric art. My paternal grandmother worked in fabric embroidery and tapestry mostly, which she studied at the RA so there was a lot of Edwardian and earlier fabric art about when I was a child. I would have found the whole exhibition much easier to relate to if it also had some earlier stuff in it to make a progression or connection.  

That said I can relate to  Sky by Kiki Smith 

this may be because I sketched part of it last time I went to the exhibition

Another thought that occurs to me is that all of the artists are female and I am male, so I think there is an element of me probably just not getting some of it, but I still think the crux of the problem is too many different artists to take in.

Anyway I spoke to several people I know at the exhibition and they were all very pleased with it to I will get back soon with a decent camera and more time to sketch exhibits.