Saturday was culture day as Jules and I took a trip to Tate Britain; mainly for the Francis Bacon exhibition but also for the Turner Prize 2008.
Having previously only seen Bacon’s paintings in print, it was particularly exciting to have the chance to experience his work close-up; and we certainly weren’t disappointed.
The gallery space comprised ten individual rooms, each containing works from specific periods and themes. It’s true to say that you cannot possibly get a sense of the emotional content when you see his pictures outside of the gallery context. The archive room was of particular interest as it contained retrospectives of the artist and insights into the inspiration and drive behind his work. It’s a shame the paintings had to be placed behind protective glass as it caused many to become mirrors, reflecting both the viewer and the rest of the gallery, which removed much of their original energy and intent.
Having spent a good hour stuffing our minds with Bacon, we headed to the café to stuff the rest of us. This turned out to be a costly affair: we both had a sandwich type thing, a Pepsi and a slice of pecan pie, which was, undeniably, very nice but came in at around the same as you’d pay for a reasonable Chinese take-away for at least three people. The signs stated that the catering was provided by the Tate itself, in order to subsidise it; I should, by rights, now be able to call at least one of its major artworks mine.
After lunch we headed off to the Turner Prize 2008 gallery. I had seen snippets of the nominees’ entries beforehand so I knew what to expect, sort of.
The first room was Goshka Macuga’s offering, which seemed more of a minimalist promotion at Ikea than a work of art. The first part to the installation was rain-like pencil lines all the way around the walls. To complement this was a sparsely arranged series of photo-montages. The final part was three dominating steel, glass and fabric sculptures. All of this, it seems, is meant to depict relationships – both human and material; I guess you need to know the background of the people concerned to understand. Or perhaps not. If I had the space and the money, however, I would have one of the sculptures, Deutsches Volks (pictured), as a feature; though not for its implied symbolism, of course, just because it looks so bloody cool.
Walking through to the next gallery, we were confronted by Cathy Wilkes’s entry.
I Give you All My Money is a bizarre installation dominated by two supermarket checkouts. There are empty and broken jars, roof-tiles, items of crockery and other standard household items strewn around the space but the most curious part is the presence of two nude female mannequins, one with her head inside a birdcage, leans against the far checkout; an empty baby-buggy stands next to her. The other, wearing a nurse’s hat, sits on a toilet at the forefront. She has an array of objects including horseshoes, a balloon and a teacup hanging from string and wire bound around her eyes, and is also holding a string of horseshoes. Scattered around the base, are pieces of dried porridge, apparently. This piece supposedly conveys a breakdown of communication and the distinct inability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings. I’m sure the items have some kind of significance – not for me, however.
The passage leading to the next gallery became a meandering tunnel, becoming progressively darker. Before entering the room, the last piece of light highlights information about the artist, 
Runa Islam and her entries. These were all film and video based: the first, Be the first to see when you see it shows a woman walking around a display of china crockery and bells. She scrutinises them before the scene cuts away to slow motion footage of her pushing them or dropping them onto the concrete floor. The second, CINEMATOGRAPHY is shot in and around a factory, or her studio perhaps, moving from outside to inside, the camera seems to be on a programmed path forming a pattern – which turns out to be spelling the word cinematography – hooray for robotics. We left before it finished. Lastly was First Day of Spring, film of rickshaw drivers not doing very much at all as the camera slowly pans across. We left almost before this started.
The last artist, Mark Leckey also had a video based entry, composed of several separate works. Of those we stopped to see: one was a continuous slideshow which started with a scene of a stark room occupied by an object on a podium at the far end. With each slide the camera zooms in on what turns out to be a highly convex mirror, reflecting the room and a door leading to a small box-room, which becomes the focus. Each time the camera zooms the room becomes more detailed and we see a partially obscured poster of a semi-naked woman, there are pictures pinned to the wall and someone’s hand, the artist’s, presumably; this is all very reminiscent of the device used by Deckard to examine evidence in Blade Runner. When it’s in as close as possible, the scene refreshes back to the room where a different object is seated on the podium and the whole process starts again, the smaller images on the wall of the room have changed but the poster stays constant throughout the different versions. 
Another part of the installation is a black television showing video of Felix the Cat on a potter’s wheel being filmed, lit by strobe lights. The camera views keep changing between what’s being filmed and what’s filming it, all the time accompanied by a soundtrack from a 70s sci-fi B-movie. The final part is a view of a dilapidated room with nothing but a CGI of Jeff Koons’s Rabbit in the centre which the camera perpetually circles so the room can be seen distorting round the curves of the figure. By the time I’d watched all this Jules had moved on. When I caught up with her, she was into the last part of the installation; presumably this was the feature piece, cinema in the round, but it seemed to have become stuck on a close-up image of a lemon. Fascinating.
Emerging from the cinematic darkness, we were met by the bright lights of what I suppose you could call the recovery room: an area set out with tables sporting pads of paper, pencils and pots of badges on which were the names of the four artists. 
Along the walls were cork boards filled with people’s comments, some pinned up with the badges. We stayed for a while reading them, there were the usual “xxx woz ‘ere” type of thing but also a few inspired offerings, most of them expressing disappointment over this year’s entries.
I’m not a great fan of modern/contemporary art and don’t claim to understand it – if indeed there is anything to understand in the first place; and, whilst it was certainly an experience, I couldn’t help feeling a little empty and unchallenged. With the exception of Cathy Wilkes’s sculpture, which both Jules and I liked because of its intrigue (even if we didn’t ‘get it’), there was no edge to the other work, no points of contention, it just seemed to be there purely because it could be. Surely part of the point of all this was to for it to stick two fingers up at you and get ready for a fight?
After the Turner, we headed off to the established galleries: the 16th century portraiture and landscapes, Hogarth’s London et al. I have to say I find them a little dull and like very old family photo albums. One interesting piece of information was that Elizabeth I insisted her portraits were painted flat and amateurish, which is why there is such a contrast in detail between them and other works of that period.
Whilst wandering through the rooms I managed to glimpse Martin Creed’s Work No. 850. This consists of a number of athletes sprinting through the Duveen Gallery at 30 second intervals. In the artist’s words:
“I like running. I like seeing people run and I like running myself… running is the opposite of being still. If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s an example of aliveness.”
Which does make sense, I suppose. I needed to sit down after watching it.
We continued through more works, both old and new: some Constables, William Blake, Cecil Collins – particularly The Angel of The Flowing Light - a stunning painting. Some other notable highlights were Tracey Emin’s CV and sketches, and Paul Noble, who seems to have a fixation with a certain part of the male anatomy, with which he shares the first part of his surname – each to their own.
Time was running out so after a quick rummage through the shop, we headed off. It was a fabulous day and one we need to complete, as we didn’t get to see all the galleries; we’ll do that next time, probably taking in Tate Modern again, too.
