Photographs of Tracey Emin’s Bed and Arp at Turner Contemporary crumbling toward a review.

This is Tracey Emin’s Bed. Is it art? Why is it on display in Margate? How do people write reviews?

I am not an art critic but as Saturday is my day off I’m a watercolour painter, so I will try, My Day.

Margate doesn’t appear to start until 10am so I drove over there from Ramsgate aiming to arrive at about 10 to 10 I parked in the multi-story under Morrisons which costs £2.70 for all day.

My main objective being to paint what I can see

From somewhere with a view.

Like in this JWM Turner of Margate High Street I used to draw the picture first in pen and then sort of colour it in with watercolour paint.

Like Turner I reached the point where I stopped bothering to use the pen and just painted the picture straight on to the paper.

This is a fairly late Turner watercolour of Margate painted in his late 50s.

The tide in Margate was out and the sun over the town so the light was travelling from the town towards the sea, so one of the rare times I can get on with the boats in my painting of Margate Lighthouse.

I wanted to see the exhibition before I started painting from the café so I went round it very quickly and did it again later at a more leisurely pace.   

After this very quick view my favourite picture in the exhibition was this Dada drawing by Arp I think.

I went to cafe, sketched some more boats dried out before the tide came in and floated my boats' and before the rain clouds came and made it difficult to see the boats.

I went back to look at the exhibitions before it got as bad as this.

Photography is allowed in the exhibition and I took some pictures with the camera I had brought with me to take pictures of boats at sea, and some pictures with my mobile phone.

 The lighting in Turner Contemporary is not good for either camera, I think when the gallery was built one of the mistakes they made was to install halogen lighting instead of LED lighting. There are various issues with this one, the main one being the gallery staff spend a great deal of time measuring the light to ensure minimal damage to the paintings another is that it isn’t as light as one would like when using the wrong camera.

Anyway at this point here is the link to pictures I took today with my camera http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1017l/id3.htm and here is the link to the pictures I too today with my phone https://photos.app.goo.gl/IVoQMcgCncvrscWt2 assuming that you have now looked at some of them then you have some idea of what I saw today.

My feelings are that you can’t say much about visual art and in general the more you can say about a picture the less good the picture is, well that’s not exactly right is it? But I can only convey what I mean here by saying the wrong thing and you thinking. That’s not exactly right.

Arp Dadaism first, my family – when I was a child and my family’s adult friends would talk about, have books about – this type of art and so? When I view it, what? Some of the lose toys in my attic start to fly.

Some of it makes me feel? Uncomfortable? Some of the shapes? Erotic? Anatomical? So all well and good, a decent exhibition, shifted my hypotenuse type of kidney.

Worth coming down for a visit? I think so.

Then the My Bed, well my take on this is that this is when art pays Margate back, a major art work and one that everyone has heard of, so a big crowd puller and very good for businesses in the town and the local economy.

There is a sense in which the bed isn’t art anymore and has become history, so yes all well and good – it works.

The Turners around the bed, I find these much more difficult to understand, some seem to have been chosen as décor to go with the bed, the colours on the pictures matching the stains on the bed as it were.

This is a case where I feel the paintings need more text, which isn’t a good sign, I think – I expect some of them were studies for other pictures, perhaps as good as Turner’s watercolour of Margate Lighthouse, which although not in the exhibition does show me how very far I have to go in terms of producing a really good watercolour of Margate.  

Tracey Emin in New Year's Honours

Our Tracey is to be made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to the arts.

I can see that with this new honour I shall need to do a more tasteful and fetching sketch of her, perhaps in blue gouache. 

Lost in Thanet a Friday ramble about art and stuff.

My day off yesterday and I popped into Margate to view The Turner Contemporary’s latest commission, with the TSE label on the tin I was expecting a bit more than baked beans inside, perhaps, the intersection of the timeless moment would be Margate and nowhere. Never and always?

As it was the moment which is not of action or inaction, turned out to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. I did pop into the gallery and have another look at the works of Emin, Turner and Rodin and speculated as to why our Tracey had left out one of the most controversial of turners erotic sketches.

It’s far too rude to put here, so here is the link to some of his more controversial pictures http://margateturner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/test-post.html the top one is on display in the gallery, and looking at it I thought there was something artistically not quite right about it. It’s the bloke’s hand don’t you know, positioned further away from the end of his arm, than what it ought “a bee” which made me wonder if some of Turner’s erotica wasn’t drawn from life, but was more in the nature of a record of Turner’s activities. After all to put this sort of thing in words requires a specialist skill, which could even have left old TS wanting.

This rather left me wondering if the next sketch down was something in the nature of a self portrait, to use the local parlance here abouts, was JWM Turner a bit of a shirt lifter. Looking at the shape of the nose and comparing contemporary portraits it does seem I could be on the right track here.

Perhaps this is something that Stephen Fry ought to have asked Tracey Emin about, not did she think JWMT was bisexual, but why did she leave this picture out of her selection.

The Olympic madness seems to be setting in, I tried phoning the council to see if they were aware of their confusion about the Olympic torch route through Ramsgate, the councils operator put me through to an answerphone so I rang the council again and was but through to a different answerphone. At the moment which way the torch will go through Ramsgate is anyone’s guess. Looking on FaceBook one of my friends has posted that McDonalds have managed to ban chips at the Olympics, see http://food.uk.msn.com/socialvoices/blogpost.aspx?post=5712d7fe-c952-426b-a338-5b8f64dadc4b&_nwpt=1&lc=1033

I have also noted back on the art theme that there is a new art exhibition starting at The Belgian Café in Ramsgate tonight, the Broadstairs and St Peter’s Arts Group, I will try and wander down there this evening and report back on what it’s like.

Still on the arts front, the boat project is due to arrive at Margate harbour Arm this evening, Friday 13^th intervention by wind (we tried sailing yesterday and there wasn’t any)  means the boat will travel from Ramsgate to Margate by road, see http://www.theboatproject.com/

I did just check the council’s tourist website http://www.visitthanet.co.uk to see if there are any other arts events on today, this is what it says,

Commercial Break, Lone Broadcast and Numbers at Broadstairs

Fri 13 - Wed 18 Jul 2012

·                                

Magz Hall at The Old Look Out Gallery at Broadstairs

Fri 13 - Wed 18 Jul 2012

·                                

what with the council being lost in Thanet I wasn’t surprised that there didn’t seem to be any mention of the Belgian Café or the boat.

Quite strange really the council’s bizarre web presence, both of the entries above are copied directly from the council’s leisure website, the only two listed for today’s date, when you click on them they both seem to be entries for the same event.

I don’t recommend further clicking, this will take you to places like the wrong place on Google maps, and as for the other events that are also held in this venue “The Old Lookout” obviously whoever wrote this has either never been there or thinks it is The Tardis.     

 I have bunged up my watercolour of Turner here, I know the eyes are a bit odd but I think the nose is ok.

I will ramble on here.

Rambling on post Belgian Café, the art exhibition there is pretty good, lots of mostly fairly small pictures and well worth going in for a viewing.

I figured that as the exhibition started today a lot of the people in there were probably artists so I found a fairly dark corner to sketch from, the snag here being that I couldn’t really see what I was drawing or what colour the paint was, the results below are, as you see, a bit on the odd side.

Some photos round the harbour this evening, there must be a lot of potential in terms of commercial opportunities from all of the windfarm boats there now. Sorry if some of the photos are a bit blurry the light wasn’t that good http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop712/id4.htm

The ones with the lines of coloured lights on them are achieved by changing the focal length of the lens (turning the zoom ring) while the shutter is open. 

A Visit to Margate and The Turner Contemporary, with some thoughts on erotic influences in art, a ramble with pictures.

With the inclement forecast and a day off giving the desire to go somewhere and do something, I decided that that any good weather would probably be in Thanet and if it rained hard The Turner Contemporary would provide shelter and some pictures to look at.

I started with tea at Puffins Café and did the sketch above while drinking it, don’t count the windows this was a quick sketch and I didn’t, in fact I missed at least one building completely.

The sketch was done by using a fine Pit pen, type S, black India ink, for the sky line and then mixing up some likely watercolours and splodging things in.

Puffins Café  on Margate harbour arm comes highly recommended the civilised pot of tea for the three of us cost £2.50.

We then meandered off into Margate capturing a supermarket sarni en passant but with a storm brewing it was too hot and oppressive for shopping so headed back to the harbour arm, on reaching The turner Contemporary two things happened. The first was it started to rain and the second was I received the press release saying the gallery has won an architectural prize, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/21-june-2012-turner-contemporary.html

Shedding any thoughts of sheds and feeling somewhat inconvenient after all that tea I made for the vicinity of the Charles Webb, where I relived myself and then started refilling my paintbox’s waterbottle which someone took as a possibly subversive act and I had to assure them that I was a watercolourist and not a terrorist.

Now of course we come to the rude bit, which I will add later when less people are reading this post.

     I wandered around looking at blue sketches of a blue woman who was evidently having some difficulty inserting a blue tampon the artist had eventually resorted to scrawling messages along the lines of “life sucks” and so I wound up looking at the Rodin and Turner sketches which put one in mind of erotic art.

By this time I wanted to sketch something and sought a seat, the only one facing an art work, is a very hard one facing Rodin’s “The Kiss”

I don’t suppose anyone considering drawing this sculpture can do so without thinking of the Marcel Duchamp etching pictured above where the hand has been moved into a more suggestive position. 

My seat viewed Rodin’s The Kiss from a different angle (behind) and as you see I managed after the second attempt to very nearly get the other hand into a suggestive position, perhaps I will return and have another go. 

I forgot to take a photo from where I was sitting when I sketched The Kiss but this is one I took recently from about there, for anyone who isn’t familiar with the sculpture in situ. As you see the hands really are big. 


I managed to change my webhosting firm and can now publish batches of photos again, here are today’s http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop612/

I acquired two painting implements today, pictured above, I wonder if any readers can identify them, the picture will enlarge if you click on it compulsively. 

Tracey Emin exhibition at The Turner Contemporary Margate, first impressions and pictures from my sketchpad today.

The picture above is the last one I drew today, I sketched it and watercoloured it sitting on a towel, on Ramsgate Sands, I wouldn’t have thought this possible and the reason I even tried at all is to do with Turner’s sketchbooks.

I know the camera never lies and all that, but the colour of the sky in the painting is much closer, blue getting more ochreish (browny yellow) towards the horizon in the painting than the photo. The irony is that I used the same camera to photograph the painting as I did to photograph the sky. 

I took a couple of photos showing the place and equipment, because if anyone had said to me that they had managed a watercolour, sitting on a towel on sand while their children played in the sea, I don’t think I would have believed them. 

The pictures in this post will probably enlarge if you click on them compulsively, the one above, the first one I did when I got to Margate at about 9 this morning was done sitting on the steps of the Droit House, I was sleepy, so you can either describe it as not very good or dreamy.

You will have to give me time here as I am trying to find the right words to describe the exhibition in the gallery and at 9 this morning it hadn’t opened.  

I then went to the café in the shed like structure in the old town and got a cup of tea, half pint mug 60p and sat outside sketching the picture above, while I waited for the gallery to open.


There are two pictures in the exhibition that could be described as erotic, both by Turner, one is already on another blog of mine http://margateturner.blogspot.co.uk and I will add the other one later.  


Turners sketchbooks are available to view on The Tate Gallery website, this link takes you to one of them http://www.tate.org.uk/art/sketchbook/life-class-1-sketchbook-finberg-cclxxix-a-65905/92  you can turn the pages if you fiddle about there.

The link should open on one of the erotic sketches that is displayed in The Turner Contemporary, his sketch book is open in a case on this page, the main thing that strikes one about Turners sketchbooks is how small some of them are.


I use a sketchbook which is 270x195mm, they are £2.99 from The Works in Ramsgate Garden Centre, the one with the elastic band built in 150gsm  paper, the other ones they sell have paper too thin for watercolour, or are bumpy and especially made for watercolour and unsuitable for carrying around.   


Some of the Rodin sketches are very good one reminded me of Matisse, apart from one wall which has the Rodins’ and the Turners’ on it the rest of the upstairs galleries are all Tracey Emin’s work. 


Drawing and painting is very difficult as soon as one takes it out of the private sketchbook and either does it in public or displays it in public, immediately the question that inevitably arrives, like the square root on minus one in the back on ones mind, is, is it any good? 


Personally I would have left most of Emin’s sketches in the sketchbook and for me there is a sense of tentatively displaying something not intended for display about her work. This aspect of the exhibition works for me from the point of view of my own art.  

   Immediately after viewing the exhibition I walked down the harbour arm to The Puffin Café, £1.20 for a large and very civilised pot of tea, and drew the sketch above.  


Next come some of Tracey's exhibits on display at this exhibition:

Tracey Emin, She Lay down Deep Beneath The Sea 2012, Neon © the artist courtesy White Cube photo Ben Westoby

Tracey Emin, Sex 1 25-11-07 Sydney ©Tracey Emin / Tracey Emin studio

Tracey Emin Last in Love 2011Gouache on paper © the artist courtesy of White Cube photo Ben Westoby

Tracey Emin, Laying on Blue 2011 Gouache on paper © the artist courtesy of White Cube photo Ben Westoby

Tracey Emin Furniture 2011 Gouache on paper © the artist courtesy of White Cube photo Ben Westoby

I haven’t entirely made up my mind about the exhibition, I wasn’t that impressed by Tracey Emin’s pictures, but the acid test of any exhibition for me is do I need to paint and draw after seeing it.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it is certainly a great deal more unforgiving than the pencil and everything I drew today after seeing the exhibition was with India Ink, which doesn’t rub out at all. Of course you can cheat and draw in ink over pencil and then rub out the pencil, but I didn’t do this as I suppose you can see from this sketch done while the children were eating their lunch ant the cake on Ramsgate Sands.


Obviously I don’t usually publish everything in my sketch book from that day so far when I write a blog, I think I would bore everyone rigid, but it seemed to help me put this post together.  

I think the main problem with the exhibition is it just isn’t dense enough, there isn’t enough there that is different to engage your attention for long enough.

Spreading mostly small and tentative works through such a large space, with some very large areas of blank wall I don’t think is going to be enough of a draw for the next few months.

I guess it could do with some installation art, films or something, like the youth exhibition had. Many of the pictures are similar, there is a whole series in blue gouache that I think are supposed to be onanistic, possibly erotic although not to me, they could just as well be about difficulties inserting tampons or diaphragms.

And no I am not slating Emin’s work here, it is tentative and indistinct probably deliberately, I think this is about the way the exhibition is presented, it has an air of the artist having had far to much say in the hanging and selection of what is in the whole of the upstairs part of the gallery.

Perhaps there are some artists who should hang their own works, I don’t really know, but think in most cases the hanging of exhibitions requires expertise that most artists don’t possess.

The thing is the like her work or hate her work Emin is Emin and so up to a point you know what to expect, but there is a sense here of too much dilution of the dilation.  

I guess I came away feeling disappointed with the overall exhibition and although I am not very keen on Tracey Emin’s work I also know that a lot of stress goes into a public art exhibition so I partly didn’t want to blame this disappointment on her.  Having given it some thought I am coming to the conclusion that the disappointment is not entirely her fault, but of course I will visit the exhibition several more times and my thoughts may change.

But allthatsaid it did pass my personal acid test, I did come out of the exhibition wanting to pint and draw.   


If you haven’t already click on the link and work your way through all 109 pages of Turner’s sketchbook, there are a few blank pages to pass through and not all of the pictures are good pictures http://www.tate.org.uk/art/sketchbook/life-class-1-sketchbook-finberg-cclxxix-a-65905/1  

Oh nearly forgot, for those of you who can’t get around Thanet for one reason or another, the unedited contents of my camera card

Today http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop512d/index.htm

And I think these were mostly Friday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop512d/id4.htm playing with the camera in the dark.

And these Friday too http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop512d/id5.htm

Erotic Art Exhibition at The Turner Contemporary

As I expect most readers will know that the exhibition Turner and the Elements last day is this Sunday and then the upper galleries will be closed until 26^th May when the exhibition She Lay Down Beneath the Sea begins.

Here is the gallery’s webpage about it http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/tracey-emin-she-lay-down-deep-beneath-the-sea

The exhibition's central theme will be a display of paintings, sketches and watercolours of erotic subjects by Tracey Emin as well as JMW Turner and Auguste Rodin.

I have to say I was a bit shocked by this, frankly there isn’t anything very erotic in anything I have seen by Tracey Emin or Auguste Rodin but Joseph Mallord William Turner is another matter altogether.

I have only seen a very few of his erotic pictures, but the ones I have seen are very erotic, I really don’t think this is the kind of art you would wish your wife or servants to view.

Anyway I have put a modified sketch above for decency’s sake and started a new blog with an adult content warning, for Joe Turners stuff which is pretty hot, see http://margateturner.blogspot.co.uk

With Emin’s sketches I find I am reminded of the literary quote “Fainted while diaphragming herself!” and anyone who visited the TC recently and had a close look at the kiss will realise that it didn’t conform with the specification in the commission. 

I may ramble on here.       

Day off ramble, Tracey Emin, Westwood Cross, Ramsgate Town Centre.

Tracey Emin has just got the highly prestigious post of Eranda Professor of Drawing at The Royal Academy Schools of art.

One of my problems in life has been my drawing ability, I would say that the victims generally don’t like it very much, I very nearly got expelled from school over it and have only recently taken it up again. Well of course I wouldn’t dare use one of Tracey’s drawings to illustrate this post because of the copyright implications, so I have used one of my own.

Christopher Le Brun, president of the Royal Academy, said he was "delighted" with Emin's appointment and Eileen Cooper, keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, said: "In the history of the Royal Academy, we've never had a female professor before. I'm proud and delighted by this development."

I have to say I wish Tracey all the luck in the world with this one, it isn’t something I would like to have to teach as often the results are unpredictable.

I went to Westwood Cross today, something I rarely do and once again was struck by the restrictions of the infrastructure, having spent about half an hour in a traffic jam we eventually managed to park. One is only too aware that the number of shoppers there, is limited by the number who can actually get there and park.

The net result of all this is when we got into the shops they weren’t especially busy.

With all of the depressing news about shops and traditional town centres, I really can’t understand what is happening in Ramsgate town centre at the moment, nearly all of the previously empty shops seem to have been taken, a lot by national chains and have either reopened or are about to.

I am learning to sew at the moment so you can say this post is the displacement therapy while I work what I work out just what it is I have done wrong.

So be warned I may ramble on some more, in fact if the piece of fabric I am working on at the moment doesn’t soon respond to the fine tuning sledgehammer it may be a very long post indeed.   

Her Majesty the Queen to Meet Tracey Emin During Her Visit to Margate Tomorrow.

I wonder what they will say to each other, perhaps the queen will be adding one of Tracey Emin’s works to the royal collection.

Her Majesty The Queen and Tracey Emin Viewing Auguste Rodin’s “The Kiss” at the Turner Contemporary Margate.  

I won’t be there so I have added a quick sketch of the event.

update

Media coverage of the royal visit is a bit sparse yet, the only local newspaper that seems to understand hoe to use the internet enough to link up the social networking a bit is the KM Group and this is what they have put together, the page may be a bit slow to open but has video footage and pictures of the visit http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2011/november/11/the_queen_visits_margate.aspx

After rather letting us down with the publicity about the queen’s visit the council have finally started to tweet about it, see http://twitter.com/#!/ThanetCouncil in fact so excited have they got that they have put some pictures on Ow.ly see http://ow.ly/user/ThanetCouncil

Still nothing on their three tourism sites or their Facebook wall though. 


More videos here http://www.youtube.com/user/KentOnlineVideoNews#p/u


Simon Moores has put up some high quality pictures at http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/11/royal-remembrance-day.html


Oddly enough the Turner Contemporary, another organisation that doesn’t seem to have grasped how to use the internet to publicise events that well have been tweeting away today, see http://twitter.com/#!/TCMargate although they seem not to have mastered the visual side of this yet, so no piccies. they have also managed something on facebook see http://www.facebook.com/turnercontemporary?sk=wall    

David Cameron Tracey Emin, More Passion

David Cameron Tracey Emin, More Passion 

Sometimes with local news stories words fail me, click on the picture to enlarge.

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2011-1/august/22/david_cameron_gets_emin_art.aspx 

Tracey Emin, The Turner Contemporary and Kent TV

Tracey Emin is a Margate born (sorry Croydon born) artist who is supportive of the new art gallery, recently opened in Margate.

I am a local shop assistant who has been artistically moved by this new gallery.

This is one of a series of blog posts about aspects of this new gallery The Turner Contemporary.

Kent TV is a television service provided by Kent County Council, that has now been moved onto a public video hosting site similar to YouTube.

Interview with Tracey Emin about Turner... by KentCountyCouncil

I was surprised that this video of Tracey Emin talking about The Turner Contemporary had only had 20 viewings, so I have embedded it here as I assume other local people will be interested in it.

Once again I haven’t taken a photo of Tracey, so I ran the video and using a simple piece of hardware produced a picture of my own for this post, click on it to enlarge it and click on it again to make it even bigger. 

The pictures I took of The Turner Contemporary today have just published to the internet, the first batch are of the inside, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/id3.htm

As is my usual habit, apart from reducing them in size for publication I have published all of the ones on the camera card, in fact viewing them online will be the first time I see them.

What is art?

We were asked this question in the Turner Contemporary today, by a lady in one of the galleries, evidently she wished to sit down, on the other hand she didn’t want to desecrate a work of are.

Is this a chair? She asked. Fortunately it was and we were able to tell her it was, so she sat on it.

This page of pictures was taken today outside the gallery when we arrived http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/id4.htm and this page after viewing the gallery http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/index.htm

If you are new to this gallery and want to see more of it inside and out, these links take you to some other pages of pictures of it, that I have taken in the past.

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

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

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

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner

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

We seem to be developing a situation here in Thanet, where people who appear to be, intelligent, articulate and educated have become uncertain about the chairness of chairs and the artness of art.

I don’t think that this is a psychological problem, I think it appears to be more of a philosophical one.

The phrase. Don’t adjust your mind, reality is at fault. Comes to mind.

There it a large blank wall in Turner Contemporary with a sign on it, saying. Do not touch. It doesn’t say any more, like what it is one shouldn’t touch, if it was meant to be a work of art, I thought it rather a good one, oddly enough it doesn’t seem to be ascribed to anyone. I suppose in terms of the gallery it could be seen as rather dated, a piece of Post Modernism in a contemporary art gallery, perhaps it is an accident.      

I will add to this post as the day progresses, pictures of the gallery taken to today and some thoughts, as I get time.  

I never stopped loving you neon makes £58,850 in auction today

I never stopped loving you neon made £58,850 in auction today, sorry I didn’t manage to get a picture of it actually turned on. I thought I had better not use anyone else’s as I imagine this is a world where people could get pretty excited about copyright.

My own rather cynical thoughts here are, who was the craftsman, whoops sorry person, that actually made the thing and how much did they get paid? Apologies to Tracy if she did all the business of bending the glass tube, as this is something that I have had a go at, making neon signs that is and I found it very difficult.

This all brings into question the business about art and craft and what makes a neon sign, something that is a work of craft requiring considerable skill into a work of art?

Some steam engineering marine engineering and model engineering books in the bookshop.

With my recent coverage of The Steam Tug Cervia, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Steam%20Tug%20Cervia%20in%20Ramsgate%20Harbour and the Dunkirk evacuation model tug display see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/dunkirk-evacuation-model-tug-display-at.html I have been reading up on steam and model engineering.

This means I have been reading some of the books about this in my bookshop, I have just photographed excerpts from some of them to amuse other people with this sort of interest see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id22.htm

Looking at the post so far it does look as though it’s about building a somewhat eccentric and in some cases rather expensive gentleman’s library, so here are some pictures of other arts and crafts books on the bookshop selves today http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id4.htm none should be expensive, very few over £10 per book with an average price about £6.

I hope these will have a somewhat broader appeal, selling engineering and craft books as I do it occurs to me that this is for the most part an area where sexism still flourishes, with nearly all of the books about fabric related craft being bought by females and nearly al of those about wood or metalwork being bought by males.

Staying with a craft related theme I repaired the staircase between the shop and the flat above over the bank holiday weekend. This is something that I hadn’t done before and started by trying to find out how to do this using the internet, after some exasperation going from site to site trying to sell me a new staircase, once again I resorted to the books in the bookshop for the information.

Saturday Ramble Margate and Modern Art and Photographs of Margate in Kent

Thursday’s visit to Margate I have to admit to having a burger and chips at BeBeached (click on the link for their website http://www.bebeached.co.uk/ ) while she who must be obeyed went shopping.

BeBeached offers good quality food, drink, Wi Fi connection and is situated on Margate Harbour Arm, I am afraid that most of the shops that I used to visit in Margate have long since closed.

Where the harbour arm also scores over and above most of the reasonable costal eateries with a good view is the absence of traffic combined with the view across Margate Harbour to the town.

Sitting in the sun overlooking the town it is hard to imagine how things could have gone so badly wrong for Margate but a mixture of losing Dreamland and gaining Westwood Cross seems to have pretty much finished it off.

Apart from Tracey Emins recollections of teenage sex something I had just been made only to aware of see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/turner-contemporary-tracey-emin.html , the only other thing to mar the day was the increasing smell of rotting seaweed as the tide went out, perhaps it had been left to rot as a further assault on the senses related to some bizarre aspect of modern art that I didn’t understand.

Anyway I reflected on what our Tracey was trying to achive with her reminiscences of sex at 13, was it supposed to provide art though shock due to her age? I concluded that this was unlikely in view of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s age is as specified by the Nurse and Lady Capulet in Juliet's first scene as not-quite-fourteen.

Well I suppose if one was going to name the world’s most famous lovers she would come fairly near the top of the list, so this is hardly something that is likely to shock as we have had the last 400 years to get used to the idea.

While I am certain that Shakespeare’s play is art I wasn’t quite so certain about the video that Tracey had produced and by the nature of the Turner Contemporary’s funding I had had to part pay for without being consulted.

The Turner Contemporary appears to have pushed Margate Lifeboat into a somewhat difficult position, so in view of what happened to my car when I visited Margate recently see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/go-to-margate-to-see-turner.html I thought that this important item looked somewhat vulnerable.

There are very few rubbish bins on the harbour arm the two I found were situated next to each other, this also seemed to be a bit bizarre and I wondered if it had some sort of artistic significance.

In view of Margate’s aspirations to modern art and philistines like me having some difficulty identifying some of the artistic works, perhaps some sort of labelling scheme ought to be adopted.

Before leaving Margate I should warn you that what looks in the pictures like a traditional sweetshop, is actually an empty shop that used to be one with a picture of a sweetshop window display stuck to the window.

I believe this concept is known as inverse surrealism, and would be double inverse surrealism if the picture was entitled, “This is not a Sweetshop.”

Such is the nature of Margate at the moment that one feels it ought to have warning signs saying, “Do Not Adjust Your Mind Reality is at Fault.”

In case any of you are curious I gave the shell lady a light tap and she went boing suggesting that it's made of cast bronze.

Click here for the pictures of Margate

The Turner Contemporary Tracey Emin Exhibition

I thought I would go over to Margate and look at the exhibition in The Droit House, this time no one prevented me from taking photographs.

This link takes you to Tracey’s website http://www.tracey-emin.co.uk/tracey-emin-home.html

There was also a video playing in the gallery by Tracey called, “Why I Never became a Dancer”, about her sex life as a teenager in Margate.

The pictures could have been better but I didn’t want to attract too much attention by using the flash, I am also doing this from my notebook as it is my day off so I haven’t enhanced them, anyway here is the link, what you see is what you get http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510/id11.htm

Not Tracey Emin, I never stopped loving ice cream.

One of Thanet’s neon signs that I find hard to resist is the one on Morellis in Broadstairs, this ice cream parlour established in 1932 sells some of the best ice cream you are ever likely to come across.

After spending much of yesterday learning about contaminated gasworks, I headed off to Broadstairs for an ice cream, it was high tide with a moderate wind, not a good time to park on the harbour wall.

I should stress that this wasn’t an exceptionally high tide or anything like a storm, but still I managed to get a few pictures of the waves that weren’t too bad.

Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510/id3.htm

The last of the pictures are back in Ramsgate, both of the sea yesterday and progress on the gasworks demolition this morning.

I noticed on the Turner Contemporary’s website it says. “I Never Stopped Loving You is commissioned by Turner Contemporary with the support of Thanet District Council.” An amusing aside to this is the first time that planning permission was sought for Tracey’s neon sign TDC planning turned the application down.

More pictures of Margate

In view of Margate’s own Tracy, who has just written so poignantly about the town I am continuing to publish up the old pictures of Margate so here are some more, I was going to switch back to Ramsgate.

Click here to look at the pictures

Click here to read Tracey Emin’s article