A friend of mine, an art teacher during the 1960s, once recounted why he quit the position. One year a student, for his final piece, pinned a map to a wall and threw a dart at it. He got an A.
My friend quit his job the next day and went on to become a psychologist instead. I can’t help but think it an appropriate switch.
This will be a regular review of the art presented at the Baltic Art Mill/Factory/Gallery. I won’t hide my disdain for the majority of contemporary art while expressing an inexplicable appreciation for some of it. I’ve not studied art in any academic way but I’ve always held that if you need a detailed understanding of Lyotard or Deleuze to appreciate a work of art then it’s failed on some deeply fundamental level. But that’s my hang up.
Anyway, here are the reviews
Top floor – Sarah Sze – Tilting Planet.
You have to wait in a cue to see this work. Not so much because it’s popular as because the work comprises of lots of bits of stuff on the floor and bits of wool and string stretching to the ceiling. Squares of carpet, screws, A4 sheets of paper, bits of plastic, zips – y’know – stuff, all arranged in a way that dictates the path you have to walk around. The handy booklet has it, ‘initially, one might feel adrift in her doodles with consumables, however we are soon guided by Sze’s spatial compositions that appear like the scaffolding of air currents.’
I don’t have a clue what a scaffolded air current would look like myself but you don’t feel that adrift in the doodles because there’s a handy Baltic worker stood there to make sure you don’t trod on anything or walk into a bit of taut wool. Apparently Sze’s work “affirms the periphery…thus erasing spatial hegemony”. Translation: ‘reminds us big rooms have corners.’
The guide: ‘When looking at the stuff used to make contemporary art there is often a nagging suspicion that things mean things’ however with Sze’s work, ‘There are no hidden meanings; the significance of her materials is that they are universally insignificant.’ Which leaves me wondering how much this display of insignificance cost.
On the upside it was colourful and some little kids liked the piled up bits of lego. Downside – they couldn’t touch them.
Guff Factor – 8
3rd Floor – Various Artists – A Duck for Mr Darwin
A contemporary art response to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolutionary thinking in general. A bit of an island in one corner, colour coded found objects in another, a big picture of a bull, a boat with a rotoscoped screen expressing the impossibility of absolute knowledge or something, a video of horny turtles and some worms in a box. Nuff said.
My advice: read some Darwin or Dawkins and go to a museum.
Guff Factor – 6
2nd Floor – Tobias Putrih & Mos – Overhang
A big tower of blocks precariously placed. As an extension a table has small blocks people can assemble so they can question ‘how much freedom can be offered before the system will fail?’ or ‘how artists’ decisions affect the rules of the game in the context of the art institution?’
Appropriate questions all in all but how some blocks on a table ask them is beyond me. Overhang ‘undermines the apparent objectivity of science’ so I’m told, though it’s anyone’s guess how it does that. It’s just a big frozen game of Jenga in a large room to me.
Guff Factor – 7
Ground Floor – Matt Stokes – The Gainsborough Packet
A folk song and film for it based on a letter someone found from 1828 written by John Burdikin. No, I don’t know who he is either. The video is shot nicely enough. Some money’s been spent on it and if the actors weren’t singing to camera with jolly, kids TV faces pasted on I’d say it captured an atmosphere pretty succesfully. I do like a bit of folk music but I can’t say I liked this particular song – but whatever floats your boat. My main issue with this is that I don’t know what it’s doing here in the first place. It should be on some folk version of MTV not in an art gallery.
One recurring bug bear about contemporary art I have is that much of it is comprised of work done much better by people in other industries. Saying that, as far as video art goes this beats most of it hands down. Video art often contains things like a man with a cone on his head jumping up and down to music played backwards, filmed with a hand held video camera. No doubt some of that ilk will crop up here before too long. So, even though it shouldn’t be here this does show some skill at something but if that’s the best you can say for the entire building’s content it’s not great. Are we really supposed to appreciate this more than other music videos because it’s looped on a big screen in an art gallery?
Guff Factor – 5
Honestly I do like some contemporary art. Just none of this I’m afraid. But do feel free to explain to me what I’ve missed and I might be able to go back and appreciate it more.
This post needs more pics. I’ll add some later.
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