Martin Boyce, Turner Prize Winner 2011
Tonight I braced myself for another Turner Prize. I like art. I get it. But I find the Turner Prize fantastically irritating. I have for many years and so much so that at times I have tried my utmost to ignore the entire circus surrounding what I cynically see as a media event. It’s not the art so much as the pontificating that surrounds it, the affectation of the pundits, the critics, those that try so desperately to say something…meaningful.
It seems that for so long the art inner-circle have used the prize to show the rest of the world how cleaver they are, how connected. We can only admire their gnostic wisdom and wish that we too could float above the earth in our higher knowledge (now I sound like them).
That’s the point. It’s not the art that irritates me so much, it’s the people. So here’s the Turner prize again, I’m an art teacher, I’m supposed to like this stuff, and so I prepare for another onslaught of art dribbled in nonsense.
Tonight I was only slightly irritated. Or perhaps I was a little less irritated than normal – that’s until one of the experts dismissed the ‘street perspective’ (comments about the art from the common people) as being somewhat childish.
At least I liked two of the artists and not just their art. They spoke sense about their art. They seemed to be genuine in the work they spent their working lives making.
On hearing the result I was slightly disappointed, not for the art selected as the winner, but for my feeling that the most down to earth artists missed out again.
At least, this time, the winner was not the most irritating artist in the room.
Mr Coop
Take a minimum of 50 photographs of found still-lifes. Make sure you find a varied range of still-lifes and that you take good photographs (not just snap-shots). Print out your photographs as contact sheets and have them avaialble at the START of your lesson on Tursday 8th December.
wad45
wad100
