To Margate to see the Turner Prize - Turner
Contemporary as a space was a little underwhelming. Of the 3 art spaces built
at the same time The Hepworth wins hands down for both the architecture and its
site - and firstsite comes second even with its curved walls.The work in the
show has lots to say but I have seen better examples of their work elsewhere Laurence Abu Hamdan at Chisenhale and
Documenta was awesome and Tai Shan
at Glasgow international was moving so it all felt a little second division. The
real highlight of Margate was the small but energetic artist spaces Resort,
Limbo and Crate and the show Gossamer at Carl
Freeman Gallery where the work of artists who had used tights was
exhibited. Beforehand a day in London so checked out a number of great spaces Shana Moulton at Zabludowicz had some
transformative videos and got to play with Florian
Meisenberg’s VR - Fiona Banner
at Frith Street continued her exploration of punctuation with a series of
interventions into romantic yet threatening seascapes. Marian Goodman had a
stunning show of Nan Golding’s gloriously
tragic images - the video work was so moving and I have had to re-evaluate Charles Aznavour - his rendition of
what makes a man a man over black and white images was truly beautiful. White
Cube has some professional Gormley’s
as a sort of shop for the RA show and the Hauser and Wirth have heavily
textured with big on process work from Mark
Bradford. As ever the trains have been appalling - the service, or lottery
that is the timetable.....cancelled, late, slow, cold, dirty and erratic with
conflicting or little information as to why - the future is like some form of
legend or fairytale - apparently it will all be ok when the new trains arrive -
like mystical good fairies - we just await trains that are on time, clean, warm
which we will exchange for money - which we appear to be doing already - more
fool us.
