06 January 2010

Turner Prize 2009

On the last weekend of its run, we got to the Turner Prize show.The first work in the first room was Leonora (Death) 2006 by Lucy Skaer - "an engulfing swathe of densely worked paper, its surface almost entirely covered with a suffocating matrix of tiny ink and graphite spirals, each a tiny self-contained unit. From a distance, however, the life-size outline of a whale skeleton is faintly discernible amid the abstract marks. The eye is forced to oscillate between the different registers - the detail and the whole - in an attempt by Skaer to generate the vertiginous sensation of 'the whale moving beneath you'." (This is from the little book about the show.) The drawing is part of this installation shown elsewhere -
Photography not permitted, so this picture of the prize winner, Richard Wright, is from this website -
It will be painted over. Wright says the ephemerality of his site-specific work is part of the concept.

Outside the exit, people were invited to comment on the exhibits -
Children had no compunction about doing so, nor did parents hold back on encouraging them -
We thought "Louis" had the makings of a connoiseur, or a poet - or, with a little training, an art critic -
Nicole, also a Wright fan, got into the spirit of things -
"please destroy this note after several weeks".

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