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One very successful Ramsgate arts group was told that if it didn’t move to Margate its grant funding would be withdrawn.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

Tissot Revised and the Blue Plaques for Ramsgate.

This is another question about art this time it is unquestionably art, the question however is where that art took place, after my post about this last Saturday see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/02/tissot-ramsgate-passing-storm-blue.html there has been a certain about of debate about where Tissot painted his pictures of Ramsgate from.

I can only say that I am afraid I was mistaken in my previous post when I said it was the Castle Hotel and that it was in fact The Royal Albion Hotel, this was the building – now demolished – that stood on the site of the building where Pizza Express is now and was purpose built to house The National Westminster Bank.

Several things worried me about my previous assumption, one being that Tissot was unlikely to reproduce the same artistic license over the shape of the windows in several paintings and drawings.

Another was would have stayed at The Castle when he could have stayed at The Royal Albion Hotel or The Royal Hotel?

Another was the position of the Police Office and the Harbour Trustees Committee House on the other side of the road, shouldn’t part of theses have shown up in the pictures.

Anyway the pictures say it all really, right windows, unobstructed view and right class of hotel.

Click on the link for some more http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id23.htm

Turner Contemporary’s Big Event, this is not a blog post.

A timely reminder to all of you that support funding the Turner Contemporary’s day to day running costs with your council tax, business rates et al, tomorrow is their Big Event, so don’t forget to be on Margate beach at the Marine Bathing Pool tomorrow morning to get your money’s worth..

Unfortunately like most of the people who will be funding the running of this new asset for Margate I will be at work, so this is one artistic experience that I will have to forgo.

A question that one may need to answer is; is it art?

I mean for me Andy’s Coke bottle and banana -click on it to enlarge - in the picture above definitely are but does this mean that as he is an artist; Andy Walking, Andy Tired, even Andy Taking a Little Snooze is art?
What is wrong with me? Am I caught out perhaps? Musausa sapientumum fixa est in aure?

Hamish Fulton - Margate Walk from Hugh Kermode on Vimeo.

You will note that on some days more than one person was interested enough to watch the above video.

Sorry about that once I try and write banana I can’t always stop, I have just been for a walk here are the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id22.htm I am fairly certain that it wasn’t art, and fairly certain that it wouldn’t have been art, even if I was an artist, I am not so sure however that it would have been not art if it had been expensive and not unsure if this wouldn’t have been to do with who was forced to pay the bill.

Yes I am afraid that is what we are left with; lots and lots of bill, bill in fact for miles and miles.

The first webcast of a Thanet District Council meeting

Having I believe been partly instrumental in causing this webcast is should first like to thank all of those responsible in bringing it about and most particularly to thank them for taking the risk of doing so with inadequate equipment.

I have managed to listen to all of it between different things that at I had to do yesterday evening and this morning and should point out that once it has downloaded to your pc it seems to stay there and any time you open the webpage that it’s on you can drag the cursor in the time bar to wherever you left off.

I suppose the thing that is most evident in the council meeting is the futility of much of the party political wrangling at local level, the problems are very large as are the constraints with evidently few practical solutions.

There is also a sense that this is mostly Margate’s council, with some councillors often seeming to forget the existence of the other Thanet towns.

A few pictures from yesterday’s walk, click on the link for them http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id21.htm

Webcast of the council meeting

http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council_meeting_webcast.aspx

Pinch and a Punch it’s the First of the Month.

Once again it’s a mister boring post for most people, the link takes you to the traffic sources for this blog for last month.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/done/id5.htm

Outside of all of the conventional statistics available from various websites, none of which have much of a ring of truth about them, this is as near as I can get to a popularity chart of the local blogs that link to this blog.

One point of note here is that Thanet Life Blog has only just been updated so that it has a live Java link to this site on it, so we won’t know where it comes until next month.

Many thanks to the 2,508 Absolute Unique Visitors who read this weblog last month.

Sunday ramble

Looking over the past weeks blogging it started with modern art and the Turner contemporary, I am often surprised by the weak use of the internet by publicly funded organisations, in this case their website http://www.turnercontemporary.org/whatson/?p=153 still hasn’t managed to get the latest video http://vimeo.com/9627523 promoting their main project on their website.

As the event is due to take place in three days time it makes one wonder what the hell they are playing at, presumably the video they have failed to add to their website was funded by their own grant money.

Still on the subject of modern art here is some of the work of one of my artist customers who buys 5 and 10p books from the austerity section in my bookshop.

The Pleasurama saga still rumbles on, am still trying to get some response to my FOI request made in October of last year for the development agreement, all this time and still they won’t even tell me if I will get the document or not.

This is an important document as due to a loophole in the law, there isn’t a planning agreement, this would normally be the key publicly available document for a development of this size, but the loophole is that there doesn’t have to be one as the council owns the land it is to be built on.

About a year ago I discovered that Roger Gale and Laura Sandys had a meeting with our senior Environment Agency officers and so asked them to put a few questions that relate to various large local developments to them, one of these questions was to ask them what their position was on the Pleasurama developments flood and storm risk?

Here is their answer:

“The Pleasurama development gained planning consent prior to the publication of the latest government guidance on development and flood risk, PPS25. When we were consulted in 2003 our floodplain maps did not show the site to be at risk and the design, at that stage, had clear evacuation routes to the top of the cliff. But, having received revised plans for the development last year, we highlighted our concern over flood risk and recommended that a site-specific flood risk assessment be undertaken. This would inform appropriate mitigation measures such as recommended floor levels, flood resilient design and an evacuation plan to ensure that the development is made as safe as possible.”

Now since then the council has agreed a new development agreement with the developer, obviously it should contain some reference to the flood and storm protection.

Another important aspect of this document is how the council is protected financially in the event of the developer getting into financial difficulties.

As the council decided to go ahead without the bond to protect it this is another important matter, my understanding is that part of the original development agreement was that the council agreed to buy the hotel part of the development if the developer couldn’t find a commercial operator for it.

I also understand that the development agreement states that the hotel is to be built first, so it would appear that we could have a situation where the council would have to find millions of pounds that it doesn’t have, to buy an hotel that no one wants.

The roadworks on harbour Parade have rather concentrated my historical interests on this part of Ramsgate this week, I wonder if the listed status of the harbour will effect how they deal with a big chunk of he old harbour wall getting in the way of their trench?

I foresee that they could run into considerable difficulties when they reach the old underground toilets, I would imagine that if the work that they are doing collapses them this could lead to considerable extra expense.

I then come to TDCTV, I gather that the video of last Thursday’s council meeting should be available on the internet from tomorrow afternoon.

As I consider that this is a very important step towards more open government from the council, I want to stress here that I am wholly supportive of them doing this. I am also strongly supportive of them going ahead with this, with dated and unreliable equipment rather than throwing money at the problem, especially as taking this risk leaves them open to criticism when things go wrong.

Next I would like to draw your attention to the new About Ramsgate blog http://my-ramsgate.blogspot.com/ and the associated collection of old pictures of Ramsgate that are appearing linked to it see http://picasaweb.google.com/115229654097861593494/OldRamsgate

I can tell you all from experience that the amount of work involved in publishing and identifying these old pictures is considerable.

This leads to the dilemma faced by historians, which is that much local history is derived from a fair amount of detective work followed by the historian drawing some conclusions and making the decision that those conclusions represent the truth.

For me the conundrum of Tissot’s blue plaque sums up the problem nicely, obviously we want to have a blue plaque commemorating his association with the town and obviously the at the moment The Castle Hotel is the most likely candidate but at the moment we can’t be 100% sure that it is the right building.

I suppose niggling in the back of most of our minds at the moment is the forthcoming general election, even talking to Conservative that I know there is sense of,

“always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.”

Much more a case of people considering the worse of evils, than having positive ideas about selecting the best government.

The legality, or not of taking us to war and the expenses scandal featuring greatly in ones thoughts.

There is certainly a sense of people wanting electoral reform, well reform of our whole political system if it comes to that and I think this may effect the way people vote.

Anyway to keep on the local theme here, what interests me most is what will happen in the general election locally.

My feelings here is that peoples perception of the quality of local government that they have been and are receiving both at county and district level, is likely to have some effect on the way people vote in the general election.

I don’t think anything much could effect the result in Thanet North, but here in Thanet South I am not so sure.

Talking to councillors and council officers it is obvious that there is going to be some sort of major shake up in the cabinet at TDC, there has also been much talk of change of leadership and deputy leadership.

As I have said before one of the big problems with the leaders position in the council it is a full time job but it doesn’t attract the level of salary commensurate with the job.

One does get occasions where the job of leader is seen as a political stepping stone, usually towards being an MP, but there doesn’t appear to be anyone on that road within the conservative group at the moment.

Talking to politicians of all parties at the moment particularly at local level the fallout of the expenses scandal means that it is becoming more difficult to find people who want to become councillors at all.

One road here is the possibility of having an elected mayor, partly because this position carries a large salary that would enable a professional person to give up their job for three years to take the task on.

I know that in the next 18 months or so the council is obliged to investigate which method of government they think most suitable for Thanet and officers will have to consider the option of an elected mayor.

Sounding them out on this one I get the feeling that they don’t like the idea of this one.

Of course we could force the issue by getting up a mayoral referendum petition, something that would mean that they would then have to ask the electorate in a ballot if they would rather vote for a leader or have one chosen for them.

As effectively this means asking the people who bother to vote if the want to vote, it seems a bit of a forgone conclusion to me.

However the short term question here is, would a change in the leadership at TDC make people more likely to vote Conservative in the national elections?



Still rambling on I’m afraid and now thinking of the local things that have gone onto the backburner, Euroferries are another company that seem to have problems keeping their website up to date, while their website is announcing tomorrow as a start date for their ferry service, it won’t actually let you book a ticket until the 18th of march and replies from them are to the effect that the service won’t start until later in March.

China Gateway was as far as I remember due to be started this March but still no sign of a planning agreement, I have always maintained that the layout of the site would probably make surface drainage imposable, so I had expected completely new plans to have appeared by now.



I will ramble on as the day progresses and may even go through and make any corrections and try and find the link to the book art website.

Tissot Ramsgate, A Passing Storm, blue plaques and local history.

As some of you are probably aware the Ramsgate Society is involved in a scheme to put up blue plaques on buildings in Ramsgate to commemorate famous peoples associations with the town.

James Tissot painted at least two paintings in Ramsgate from a room overlooking the harbour and I think I have narrowed this down to The Castle Hotel.

There are a number of factors here, the height of the balcony relative to the harbour and the angle of the views pretty much has to make it Harbour Parade, the shallow bay windows, the distinctive balcony railings, the distinctive wooden sunshade beneath the roof of the balcony and the absence of any other similar building in the right place.

The link takes you to some old photographs of Harbour Parade http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Blogpicts1210/id17.htm I think it quite likely that my deductions here may lead to a blue plaque, so any corrections would be much appreciated.