Friday, October 21, 2005
The Turner PrizeWent to look at the Turner Prize yesterday at Tate Britain.
This is always worth a visit as its usually a good bluffer's guide to what's going on in contemporary art at the moment.
I'm particularly interested in it this year because one of the entrants is a guy called Darren Almond, who I used to work with about 7 years ago (I was working for a company called Martinspeed at the time.)
My personal take on this year's prize is that it's a two horse race between Darren and Simon Starling. Darren's piece is very moving and all encompassing, and "Shedboatshed" by Simon Starling has a real poignant prescence to it (although his other pieces seemed a bit dull to me).
The other two are Gillian Carnegie and Jim Lambie.
Gillian Carnegie's paintings look like they've been chosen as a token nod to traditional art to keep the punters happy, but end up looking a bit weak next to everything else.
On the comments board at the end of the show, someone had written that they thought Lambie had puked up all his passions into a room, and that that was why they loved it. I think the commenter was right, but that was why I hated it!
Anyway, there's no substitute for seeing art "in the flesh". Go look and make your own mind up, and we'll see if we agree in the little comments box below....
