Margate some pictures, The Turner Contemporary and when art isn’t art, I make a complete ass of myself on Youtube some pictures a ramble.

Sunday my day off and we went to Margate, mainly to see the new Hamish Fulton exhibition, this mostly consists of large posters with text on them and I have to admit to being disappointed.

You are not allowed to photograph this exhibition, so I didn’t.

The Turner exhibition at The Turner Contemporary opens next weekend and that is one I am looking forward to.

Here are the photos I did take

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id10.htm

and

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id11.htm

my excuse is that I had my younger children with me.

The sketch above was done in the gallery’s restaurant while waiting for children to eat up, go to the lavatory and so on, I am slowly developing the nerve to sketch in public places. If you were a victim please accept my apologies.

I can’t seem to photograph pencil sketches so have given it a quick wash.


One thing that always amazes me is that the only window in the building facing the sunset is in the restaurant, I hope Turner was a gastronome as well as an artist because this is where the light is. 

With Hamish Fulton’s art as I have said before words fail me, so here is the sketch of his Margate walk.


If anyone can find a review of this exhibition I would be interested to read it, The Turner Contemporary is supposed to be an important gallery and the exhibition has been on for a week now, but apart from media that have just put out the galley’s press release I can’t find anything


Anyway the exhibition is in one room, photos here on gallery’s website http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton what you see is what you get.

  Another new business in Margate Old Town, Rough Trade, official opening next weekend, well worth a look.

I will ramble on here  

The Turner Contemporary Margate Last Chance to see Nothing in the World But Youth.

Tomorrow Sunday 8^th January 2012 is your last chance to see this exhibition and if you haven’t done so yet it really is worth seeing.

Peter Blake Self Portrait with Badges 1961 Oil on board © Peter Blake

From Monday the upstairs part of the gallery will be closed until Tuesday 17th January 2012 when the Hamish Fulton: Walk Exhibition starts but won’t be completely open until Saturday 28th January 2012 when the Turner and the Elements Exhibition starts.

Santiago Mostyn Callie on the sandbank from excerpt all most heaven 2008 © Santiago Mostyn

The pictures above are a couple of the ones in the current exhibition reproduced here with kind permission etc.

So what so special about this guy Will Turner?

Well for me is, and I only have even a vague notion of watercolour painting, is that he managed to get so much light in his pictures and I suppose that he managed to do a lot with not very much on the palate front.

Most of his watercolours seem to have been accomplished with four different colours, here they are.

And despite what the experts say if you take any old turner watercolour and have a go at reproducing the colours like this.

You seem to be able to make the colours.

If you are not very careful things go rather ice cream like, see what I mean.

I got a load of cheap watercolour paper for Christmas, so I can play and play and play.

Anyway using some Turner colour I am wondering what Turner would paint related to Hamish’s walks, sploshing some water and some paint on for the background, this bit of Christmas paper is about A3 size you get something like this.

However taking a closer look at the figures they won’t conform and walk properly, in fact they seem to be larking about, this happens with watercolour paint, it wouldn’t dare happen in a photograph, see what I mean. 

The point I am making here is something like it wasn’t me gov, I have added a few more people and put a two pound coin in the picture for the size of the things.

Anyway here is the finished sketch, I didn’t use the India ink for the black that Turner used as it’s a bit of a permanent thing to have about with children, I used what he would have called bone black but now is rather euphemistically called ivory black.

Well that was my bit on Hamish’s walk see http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton I am sort of working on the principle that words fail me so I thought I would try expressing my self mostly in images.  

The next four pictures are representative of Turner on the elements and I expect some of them will feature in the exhibition.

Anyway what I am trying to get at here is why the Turner pictures above are art and why the exhibition will be worth going to see and this is sort of tied in with why I can’t paint something from them.


I aim to ramble on about art and stuff here. 

The Turner Contemporary Margate regeneration and the art police.

As art related funding goes into Margate I am putting together a very worrying picture listening to local artists, art students and art promoters.

Here are a few of the things I have heard recently, draw your own conclusions, I won’t add names to this as I don’t think it would be beneficial.

One very successful Ramsgate arts group was told that if it didn’t move to Margate its grant funding would be withdrawn.

Several KCC officers have told me that The Turner Contemporary has become a sacred cow within KCC and no matter how much funding it requires, no mater how daft or elitist the projects in engages in, funding is always found, often at the expense of more conventional and down to earth projects.

One heavily grant funded art gallery in Margate is hardly ever open.

Yesterday’s bizarre walk event was deliberately held on a weekday in term time, although it was supposed to be their main event this spring and one would have expected it to be held when most people could attend.

I was told that as the most important part of this was to be the photographs and videos it was though to be best to have a crowd that was most malleable, both from the artist’s and the photographers point of view.

Local art students were told that they had to take part in the event as part of their coursework.

Several local artists have either applied for grant funding from, or offered input to the Turner Contemporary project all those I have spoken to say they have been turned down out of hand, one said that he was sure it was because his work is paint on canvas and that he thought he would have much more success with them if he asked for a grant to dig holes in the sand.

Now what really worries me here is the criteria by which they are deciding what constitutes appropriate art and the experience of those making these decisions.

As far as I can tell they are not affiliated to any experienced and significant existing art gallery and most of the control over what is happening there seems to be in the hands of civil servants, without artistic ability or qualifications.

The gallery only seems to want to interact with either people who are very young and inexperienced and therefore easy for them to manipulate, or artists who producing elitist work that’s only justification for it being art is that the “artist” says it is.

To quote Hamish Fulton "Some people have asked whether what I'm doing is art but my answer is always the same: I'm an artist so therefore this is art."

There is also a grave concern here about the effect on our young people, by this I mean the message being conveyed to them when they were forced to attend yesterdays event is this.

You are to walk round in circles, the man leading you is an artist therefore this is art, if he wasn’t an artist it wouldn’t be art, this is part of your training as artists, when you have completed your training, you will become an artist and whatever you say is art will be art and will attract funding.