The Turner Contemporary Art Gallery’s first anniversary Retrospective

Here is the blog post about my first visit to the gallery http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/pictures-of-inside-turner-contemporary.html

The gallery’s first big failure architecturally for me was that it doesn’t appear to glow in the sunlight as I was lead to expect that it would. My understanding is that it is coated with glass to achieve this. Close up it certainly appears to be covered in glass panels, but if it does glow I have never caught it in action.

I suppose the problem here is that years ago public buildings were commissioned by the rich and powerful and if an architect said the thing would glow and it didn’t, then he was probably decapitated, I don’t think women were allowed to be architects then.

The first exhibition was very contemporary art, albeit some of it rather dated contemporary art. The best aspect of it from my point of view was that one was allowed to take photographs of all the exhibits and in all the galleries.

The acid test however, did it make me want to paint and draw? Is where the point is proved for me, I hadn’t done any painting or drawing for about forty years, due to an embarrassing problem relating to a sketch of mine that very nearly got me expelled from school, after a very few visits to the gallery I picked up my pencil and brushes again.

Coming back to what is wrong with the building, the problem with the damage to the floors is an example of why the decapitation of architects may need reintroduction, anyway as the architect had survived the lack of glow, I asked him about the damage to the floors and some other faults with the building, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/fine-tuning-turner-contemporary-margate.html

I guess part of the problem here is that it us the public who have funded the thing and various government departments that ought to ensure that we get what we have paid for. The difficulty seems to resolve itself to money, the bureaucrats have all been paid and they have paid the architects and the builders, so everyone is happy.

You be wondering why I am posting this a day late, the anniversary being yesterday, two reasons really, one is that yesterday being Monday the gallery would I presume have been closed, so such celebrations as there were would presumably have been private and it is not for me to gatecrash. The other is that because the gallery first opened on a Saturday and I was at work, so today is the anniversary of my first visit.  

I did do a couple of watercolours of the early stages of visiting the gallery, which I have reproduced here as they may be the first paintings of the gallery and I will ramble on as further thoughts occur.   

As a shop assistant I would say that I am eminently qualified to talk about art, aesthetics goes hand in hand with window dressing, in the case of secondhand bookshops the normal approach being to achieve the ambience that the shop is shut, the owner out to lunch and the shop will remain closed. Metamorphosis in to early closing may be the best one can hope for.

One aspect of art is that it ought to be memorable and the two pictures of stages in the birth of the gallery illustrating this post may help you to understand what I mean, they will get bigger if you click on them and even bigger if you are a compulsive clicker.

Essentially they are similar the one at the lower down being easier to forget than the one at the top. 

So anyway lets for moment say you went to the first exhibition at the turner contemporary the main artists exhibiting there were Conrad Shawcross, Daniel Buren, Ellen Harvey, James Webb, Russell Crotty and JWM Turner.

So some questions:

How many of the names do you recognise?

How many of the exhibits do you remember?

How many of the exhibits could you put the artists name to?

Which name is missing? 

Whose picture is still there?

I scored five out of six with the first question. Seven for the next, assuming that the groups of work by the same artist in the same area count as one, five for the next, couldn’t answer the next, and could answer the last one.  

We now come to the next exhibition, Nuffin in the Worl but Youf, I done some posts bout et, viddi http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Nothing%20in%20the%20World%20But%20Youth sorry that started well and then I tripped over the clockwork orange, so had better avoid, newspeak before I go so far back in artistic time that I vanish down a rabbit whole.

Rabbiting on about this exhibition would take me all day, ‘twas the best, and if you went I guess I don’t have to ask you if you still remember any of the exhibits.

The very early Turners caused me to change the palate in my paint box, to the palate used in the pictures decorating this post. As far as watercolour goes I think turner mostly stuck to it for his whole life.

Chrome yellow, yellow ochre, rose madder, cobalt blue, burnt umber, sepia and indian ink at that stage, some others added later, I won't bore you with the details.  

The next thing to turn up was Rodin’s The Kiss pardon me for Duchamping the hand in this quick sketch of Rodin delivering it, cant help myself, life is dull but art is fun or whatever it was that the cyder ouse man said.

I had to sort out the logistics of this one with those nice people at The Tate, otherwise those nice people at The Turner would have wasted a lot of time stopping you from picturing it, a couple posts about this kiss, here http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rodin%20The%20Kiss

Finally we come to the current exhibition, Turner and the Elephants, theoretically this was what everyone has been saying they wanted for years, a Margate art gallery full of Turner’s paintings. To begin with I have to say I was a bit disappointed about the elephants.

Well there it is, in the room, I have visited this exhibition several times and using the acid test, do I want to paint and draw afterwards? Well not as much as I expected.

Obviously it would be a brave individual or a fool who criticised this exhibition, going down the more difficult but less dangerous road of playing the fool and I did have a go see before see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/ramsgate-joseph-mallord-william-turner.html but don’t think I exactly hit the nail on the head, I will try giving it another shot.     

I think it is a bit like religion, or at least visiting a church, this business of viewing a lot of the works of a great artist in a gallery, obviously it is different from viewing them online or in a book, there is an aspect not unlike going to church here.

However there is also, going to the local art gallery and finding really a considerable number of Turners on the walls, something rather akin to popping into the local church for a quiet moment, and finding that a lot of angels had turned up, and they weren’t all living up to your personal expectations of the way an angel should behave. 

There is for instance a Turner watercolour of a rainbow there, it does have some the components that make up rainbowness however it also lacks the aspect usually associated with rainbows which is colours.    

What I mean here is, was Turner intending to symbolise a rainbow, was it just a sketch notation to which the rainbow was incidental or did the colours fade in the intervening years?

I did ask the gallery attendant, who didn’t know either.

But don’t think I am getting any closer to hitting the nail on the head here.

One funny moment was when I heard someone in the gallery pointing out a particularly light part of one of the Turner oils, after they had finished their rapture about painting with light, I checked this out and found this particular patch of light was caused by an electric spotlight.

I do of course concede that Turner is the master of painting with light.   


Was Turner badly hung, well I don’t suppose that Ruskin would have tried to burn his erotic sketches that will accompany Tracey Emin’s in the next Turner Gallery expedition if he was.

On to the latest change at the gallery, something which for me suggested a lack of nerve, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/turner-contemporary-margate-and-how-do.html

To most of the young contemporary artists I know; Buren’s tired old stripes representing a 1960s statement in the Paris Metro are a personal insult, however I think this is because most of the young contemporary artists I know would have given their eye teeth to be hung in the gallery instead.

Personally I think the Buren work was a good one, although I was a little reluctant to stand between two mirrors, (There is a scientific hypotheses that says reality is two dimensional and the we, everything is actually flat, but experiencing a hologram that makes us think reality is three dimensional.) in case anything holographic occurred.  

Of course the conundrum here is that is that the people who are saying, how brilliant the art and the gallery is are the people who haven’t looked either at the art or the building properly. In fact they can be summarised as people who have nothing much to say and do the gallery no service. The whole thing about art is it is supposed to produce some other reaction than, “how nice”. 

Fine Tuning The Turner Contemporary Margate

Reading the comments on yesterdays post I have come to the conclusion that I need to expand on my concerns about aspects of the Turner Contemporary.

Putting to one side people’s feelings about the building, the art on display its potential in terms of regenerating Margate, there are some problems with the finish and design that need to be resolved.

I wrote to the architects about this recently, here is what I said:


In a message dated 03/05/2011 21:00:42 GMT Daylight Time, michaelchild@aol.com writes:


Please pass this on to David Chipperfield.

Hi David I have visited The Turner Contemporary in Margate on three occasions now and have some observations about the building that may interest you.

Some damage has occurred to the polished concrete floors see image 1.

There are some problems associated with the external landscaping, this is a bit of a mixed bag which I will try to explain, it seems to be at odds with the quality, both in terms of design and finish, of the building.

What seems to have been intended is a mixed pedestrian and traffic area between the gallery and the harbour, this should be workable as in terms of vehicle movements this area only leads to a small number of parking spaces.

In practice it is assessed via traffic lights from a busy road, so that vehicles enter it at a considerable speed, I sat outside the gallery for about half an hour and witnessed one near miss and one minor traffic accident. 

I assume that you didn’t have a hand in this part of the design as part of the roadway uses permeable slabs that have already become badly stained, see image 2.

There has been some attempt at signage, warning pedestrians that what looks and feels like a footpath in fact is quite a dangerous road, see image 3.

There is a sense of something gone awry in this area, it looks alright until one goes to use it, for example there are seats positioned too low to see over the wall which obscures the view of the harbour.

Please accept that this isn’t a criticism of the gallery, which is impressive.

Images attached.

Best regards Michael  

I didn’t hear anything for some time so I gave them a bit of a nudge  



From: MichaelChild@aol.com [mailto:MichaelChild@aol.com] 
Sent: 25 May 2011 11:30
To: Info
Subject: Re: The Turner Contemporary in Margate


Please confirm that you received the email below and passed it on as I asked.


If I don’t hear from you today I will assume you aren’t interested and take the issues up with the county council, the two Thanet MPs art council, media etc.  


Best regards Michael

This resulted in the following reply:

In a message dated 25/05/2011 16:30:00 GMT Daylight Time, holger.mattes@davidchipperfield.co.uk writes:

Dear Michael, thanks for your input. We are for sure fully aware of the issues.

New parking signage is in the making but we noticed that people tend to ignore the temporary signs put up already. Definitely Thanet needs to improve the parking enforcement and Turner Contemporary are monitoring this.

We fully share your view that clear signage needs to make people aware before they enter the site that there are pedestrians sharing the road.

The stains have been caused by the contractor of the Harbour View scheme and KCC have asked them to execute the required remedial works.

The sea-defense wall and benches in front of our building were outside of our design scope and we agree that this is high and blocks the view.

Regarding the magnesite screed in the building, we are not happy with the swirl marks either, but they luckily occur only in some areas and are overall acceptable we think. There was no option to relay the floor. Also the floors take a long time to dry out and settle and tend to become lighter over time, so what you see now will change over time and wear in.

We appreciate your comments and try to give input where we can to improve the condition.

Regards,

Holger Mattes

Project Architect

for David Chipperfield Architects

11 York Road

London SE1 7NX

T +44 20 7620 4800

F +44 20 7620 4801

holger.mattes@davidchipperfield.co.uk

www.davidchipperfield.com


There is a problem here which is it very uncertain if they have passed the email on to David Chiperfield and if they intend to take any action, so I sent them this further email: 



Re: The Turner Contemporary in Margate    MichaelChild to holger.mattes and Alison.Smith - yesterdayMore Details From:  MichaelChild Hide Add to: To Do, Calendar  To:  holger.mattes CC:  Alison.Smith BCC:Date:Thu, 26 May 2011 14:06
Hello Holger I am familiar your work and I guess you would be aware of the problems.


In the short-term traffic coming straight off busy traffic lights is likely to cause a fatality and adverse publicity for all involved. I think a bit more than signage is needed, perhaps some sort of physical traffic calming is needed urgently. 


I would say parking enforcement comes a long way down the line, unless you were one of the official visitors at the opening who received a fine notification for parking on the harbour arm.


The height of the wall relates to Wallingfords FRA and isn’t something that can be changed it is just that the benches are sited wrongly.


My understanding of magnesite screed is that it is a polymer and it should be possible to remove the scratches by using an abrasive, I wasn’t suggesting that the whole floor is relaid.


Anyway I will take the issues up in the hope that the situation can be improved in some way.


Can you please confirm that my email was passed on to David Chipperfield as essentially it’s his name that is on the design when it comes to public perception?  

Best regards Michael

While I really don’t think these problems should be down to me, basically I think something as important as the Turner Contemporary should have someone looking after these issues.

I suppose ultimately the customer is us the taxpayer, so it is down to us to make a fuss about the things that are wrong with what we have paid for. 


I am also not very happy about dealing with people who only reply promptly to some sort of timed warning, needless to say I haven’t had any reply to the email I sent to them yesterday.  


I know it is probably petty of me and I am certain that in the high flying world of international architecture emails from a shop assistant probably don’t seem very important, but I don’t like it when I write to one person and another one replies on their behalf, without even telling me if they have passed my correspondence to the person it was intended for.  

Turner Contemporary Margate Revisited, some more photographs of inside the gallery, some criticisms and problems.

Every new project is bound to have teething problems and attract some criticism and David Chipperfield’s turner contemporary is no exception.

If you are not familiar with this art gallery I would recommend you first look at the pictures I took of the inside if it last week, here are the links to the pages with them on:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id2.htm 

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id4.htm

You may also wish to read my blog post about my first visit, here is the link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/pictures-of-inside-turner-contemporary.html

Today’s pictures are on two pages, unedited straight from the camera card, here are the links:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner/id3.htm

I had my two youngest children with me and the way things worked out I took them both into the building for the first time separately, they both said it smells like a swimming pool, I had a good old sniff and couldn’t confirm this.

I meandered around with David Hockney in the back of my mind, the pictures are all natural light, with the obvious compensation for tungsten halogen and fluorescent, some fairly low shutter speeds all hand held, I took a tripod but didn’t use it, lens focal lengths between 10mm and 55mm, 35mm camera, sorry about the dirt in it, it’s worn out and needs replacing.

OK here comes the criticism.

The road layout outside the gallery is dreadful, one near miss and one minor accident in the short time we were there. It is summed up as fast traffic on a road full of pedestrians that looks like a pavement with badly placed traffic lights.

The surface is very porous paving slabs that are already badly stained with the oil from cars passing over it during the last week.

Inside the gallery the polished stone like textured concrete floors, that so impressed me last week, have been damaged by using the wrong cleaning equipment, not sure if this is covered by the insurance, in some places quite deep circular grooves have appeared in the surface.

Parts of the gallery were too hot on what it is a sunny April day, I don’t know if the climate control was set wrongly or is inadequate. A mixture of very large windows and the conservation of valuable works of art may cause problems.

One thing about the TC is they are very quick to rectify some errors, “closed Monday except bank holidays” is now prominently displayed at the top of their homepage.

I will start my criticism of the aesthetic on home ground, from the shop assistant perspective and point out that books published at $25 USD are not usually priced at £25 Stirling, like wot they are in TC shop.

Next the first artwork: “Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape” by Daniel Buren.

As this is art, here is a novices description, yellow stripes with a big round hole in the middle stuck to one of the windows, with lots of mirrors stuck to the walls each side.

We probably shouldn’t limit art by attaching names to it, but the stripes look a bit abstract to me, think Margate, think deckchairs and all that and the rest of course is all done with mirrors.

I was dead influenced by this work and have been playing with reflections since I first saw it last week.

The problem if anything is that Daniel Buren is just too good at this sort of thing, he has looked at the gallery space and considered what should be there, so that frankly when the exhibit is taken away, it’s going to look, well missing.

I don’t really see how having one art exhibit stuck there all the time is going to help the TC, I mean if some artist or rich bod donated them a major artwork they could play the swaps game with other galleries, but not this one, it fits where it is.

From the shop assistants point of view though, the question We find surfacing in the back of our mind, like “what is the square root of minus one” is. Is it great art or a very good start on a shop window display? Where are the goods?

One thing that I am certain of it is a particularly helpful exhibit to the photographer, like having an extra camera attachment, so thanks Dan. Or should I say, so long and thatnks for all the affichages sauvages.

There is a bit of sense of pulling no punches with this exhibition, in most cases the gallery hasn’t attempted to go for contemporary art that anyone can understand. This failure, I suppose is best expressed it terms of the failed magician, you know what I mean they haven’t gone out of their way on the sawing in half front, not even a solitary half mouse, let alone a cow.


I suppose the exception is "arcadia" by Ellen Harvey, the mundane explanation of this one is the shed within the shed. Outside the shed is something that could very well be waves projected light that could very well be particles, opposite an arcade sign. Inside the shed lots of black and light pictures of Margate.

Various engravers have had a bit of a go at Thanet and my favourite, Henry Moses, even drew a map showing where he had done the drawings for the engravings, no this isn’t a criticism, I aint saying “lacks map” and the work is certainly going down well with the locals.

There are people standing in front of the pictures saying things like. “I like that one.” Almost like being at Ramsgate’s great wall.

I thought of the gallery stairs.

I understand it therefore I like it.

I don’t like it because I understand it.

I don’t understand art therefore I like it.

I like it therefore I understand art.

Sorry lots on knots RD pass the couch.

Sorry about that I have put my shop assistant hat back on. Here in the books business a lecturer in literature postulated the notion of T S Eliot’s influence on Shakespeare, admittedly he did so in a humorous novel. However this was a problem for me, now the Turner and I have tried with this painting, but I just don’t think it is a very good Turner. One thing about though is it makes me think of the Turners that I do think are very good paintings, there aren’t many very good English artists and Turner is the exception rather than the rule, he is world class. So I found on both occasions, my mid swirl with colours, mostly goldish and surrounding some sort of focused Turnerish lump, you know the train funnel one with the viaduct exploding in Turnerishness.

Anyway this is the problem with the next exhibit “The Perfect Third” by Conrad Shawcross, the influence of Turner on Shawcross approached from the influence of E Harvey on Turner, the light that is.

So there I am with my camera playing with The Perfect Third trying to photograph the people exploding into Turnerishness.



   

I will ramble on if I get time I hope to criticise the artworks on display in this exhibition next.

David Chipperfield, The Turner Contemporary, architecture at Sea in Thanet a bit of a ramble.

I was born in the same year as David Chipperfield and so I suppose there must be some common ground, I once worked for a different Chipperfield, who ran a fun fair. My main connection with Margate is that I was employed as an engineer working on the various sites owned by Associated Leisure sometime in the early 1970s. This was the firm that owned Dreamland, the Lido and most of the amusement arcades along what used to be known as Margate’s Golden Mile. I have always been fascinated by electromechanical and electronic control of machines and for a while it was amusement machines that interested me.

With this new building opening to the public at the weekend I feel I have some affinity with Margate, the architect and the building, I also have an interest in art and our local architecture, so here goes some sort of post.

Major public architectural structures on the foreshore in Thanet nearly all have an unusual history and The Turner Contemporary has already one of its own, most people will remember Snohetta and Spence's design and the prototype that failed its test when the sea washed it away. After this a much more practical approach to constructing a building on the foreshore was adopted, a proper professional flood risk assessment has been carried out for David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary so I is unlikely to be washed away, as Margate Pier was. Like it or not here in Thanet we have probably got it for a long time.

I know people have likened it to a shed, a gun emplacement and various other things, when I first saw the design drawings, the first thing that occurred to me was that it looks like a series of heads of K9 without ears. You can’t help what your mind does and perhaps it is best not to mention this sort of thing, but I don’t think it matters here as I don’t think the finished building looks like K9.

In a sense this weekends opening is the third opening of the Turner Contemporary in Margate, as it has previously opened in the old M&S building and The Droit House, lets hope it is a case of third time lucky. The two previous incarnations have seemed to me to be a bit underwhelming, attracting almost no interest at all. I have visited almost all of the exhibitions in both buildings and apart from the people working there I have usually been the only person looking at the exhibition.

With the Droit House I got the feeling that much of what was happening there was fake, the silly walks, the attempts to encompass local history into art which seemed to missing the vital ingredient, a local historian. Perhaps it was the ambience of the building, which is of course a fake itself, the original having been dispatched by Hitler.

Contemporary art and architecture is elitist, and there is a sense that the new building has been designed for the benefit of the elite inside it, from the outside it looks utilitarian, there is I agree some elegance to it when viewed from some angles, but there is no doubt the prime utility is for those inside.

There is also the sense that both contemporary art and architecture generates an emperor’s no clothes situation, this was particularly evident in the Droit House at some times, where there was a very real sense that the staff were being careful not to leave anything about that wasn’t supposed to be art that could be mistaken for art.

There is also a sense in seaside architecture that is intending to be something that it isn’t, the only other famous architect that I know of to design something that was actually built down on the Thanet foreshore was Stanley Davenport Adshead who designed Ramsgate’s Royal Victoria Pavilion, built in 1904. This was supposed to look like Little Theatre at Versailles, like the Droit House we can call this a fake, it was intended to be one from its first inception.

Well Ramsgate’s Royal Victoria Pavilion hasn’t succumbed to Hitler, hasn’t been washed away like the mock up of Turner 1, or the adjacent Margate Pier, but is has become a victim of circumstance, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/11/pictures-of-inside-of-royal-victoria.html

My understanding was that the new gallery was going to be coated in glass and glow in the sun, either this hasn’t worked, I haven’t seen it or the idea was dropped for some reason. Has anyone seen it glowing, or isn’t it supposed to?

I think all of the main Thanet blogs have been unkind about the whole idea of building this gallery, this is a quote from Thanet Life, probably Thanet’s oldest blog:

“Why the fiscally challenged planners at Kent County Council in conjunction with Thanet Council, believe that opening a gallery in a famous artist’s name, with none of his paintings on display, will suddenly transform Margate into a cultural Mecca and attract hordes of cultural day-trippers is anyone’s guess.”

Well they have managed one Turner and admittedly it is one of the few Turners not painted from life but based on a sketch by another artist, so once again it is a bit of self confessed fake.

We certainly haven't got what we first expected which was a gallery that looked like a huge pebble on the beach, perhaps the question here is not so much does it look like an art gallery? But will it look like an art gallery? If it becomes famous enough people will look at this shape and think, art gallery, if it fails to then I suppose they will continue to look at this shape and depending on who they are they will think, shed, gun emplacement, K9, this is all something to do with what art is about, that it is something that has changed people from seeing a particular representation of a can of soup and experiencing artistic appreciation instead of. What? Seeing a can of soup.

Just as a further note if you are getting a warning saying that this site has a virus on it today, you need to update your virus checker.