David Cameron Tracey Emin, More Passion

David Cameron Tracey Emin, More Passion 

Sometimes with local news stories words fail me, click on the picture to enlarge.

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2011-1/august/22/david_cameron_gets_emin_art.aspx 

Tracey Emin, The Turner Contemporary and Kent TV

Tracey Emin is a Margate born (sorry Croydon born) artist who is supportive of the new art gallery, recently opened in Margate.

I am a local shop assistant who has been artistically moved by this new gallery.

This is one of a series of blog posts about aspects of this new gallery The Turner Contemporary.

Kent TV is a television service provided by Kent County Council, that has now been moved onto a public video hosting site similar to YouTube.

Interview with Tracey Emin about Turner... by KentCountyCouncil

I was surprised that this video of Tracey Emin talking about The Turner Contemporary had only had 20 viewings, so I have embedded it here as I assume other local people will be interested in it.

Once again I haven’t taken a photo of Tracey, so I ran the video and using a simple piece of hardware produced a picture of my own for this post, click on it to enlarge it and click on it again to make it even bigger. 

The pictures I took of The Turner Contemporary today have just published to the internet, the first batch are of the inside, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/id3.htm

As is my usual habit, apart from reducing them in size for publication I have published all of the ones on the camera card, in fact viewing them online will be the first time I see them.

What is art?

We were asked this question in the Turner Contemporary today, by a lady in one of the galleries, evidently she wished to sit down, on the other hand she didn’t want to desecrate a work of are.

Is this a chair? She asked. Fortunately it was and we were able to tell her it was, so she sat on it.

This page of pictures was taken today outside the gallery when we arrived http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/id4.htm and this page after viewing the gallery http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbookturnermay/index.htm

If you are new to this gallery and want to see more of it inside and out, these links take you to some other pages of pictures of it, that I have taken in the past.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id2.htm 

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner/id3.htm

We seem to be developing a situation here in Thanet, where people who appear to be, intelligent, articulate and educated have become uncertain about the chairness of chairs and the artness of art.

I don’t think that this is a psychological problem, I think it appears to be more of a philosophical one.

The phrase. Don’t adjust your mind, reality is at fault. Comes to mind.

There it a large blank wall in Turner Contemporary with a sign on it, saying. Do not touch. It doesn’t say any more, like what it is one shouldn’t touch, if it was meant to be a work of art, I thought it rather a good one, oddly enough it doesn’t seem to be ascribed to anyone. I suppose in terms of the gallery it could be seen as rather dated, a piece of Post Modernism in a contemporary art gallery, perhaps it is an accident.      

I will add to this post as the day progresses, pictures of the gallery taken to today and some thoughts, as I get time.  

I never stopped loving you neon makes £58,850 in auction today

I never stopped loving you neon made £58,850 in auction today, sorry I didn’t manage to get a picture of it actually turned on. I thought I had better not use anyone else’s as I imagine this is a world where people could get pretty excited about copyright.

My own rather cynical thoughts here are, who was the craftsman, whoops sorry person, that actually made the thing and how much did they get paid? Apologies to Tracy if she did all the business of bending the glass tube, as this is something that I have had a go at, making neon signs that is and I found it very difficult.

This all brings into question the business about art and craft and what makes a neon sign, something that is a work of craft requiring considerable skill into a work of art?

Some steam engineering marine engineering and model engineering books in the bookshop.

With my recent coverage of The Steam Tug Cervia, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Steam%20Tug%20Cervia%20in%20Ramsgate%20Harbour and the Dunkirk evacuation model tug display see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/dunkirk-evacuation-model-tug-display-at.html I have been reading up on steam and model engineering.

This means I have been reading some of the books about this in my bookshop, I have just photographed excerpts from some of them to amuse other people with this sort of interest see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id22.htm

Looking at the post so far it does look as though it’s about building a somewhat eccentric and in some cases rather expensive gentleman’s library, so here are some pictures of other arts and crafts books on the bookshop selves today http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id4.htm none should be expensive, very few over £10 per book with an average price about £6.

I hope these will have a somewhat broader appeal, selling engineering and craft books as I do it occurs to me that this is for the most part an area where sexism still flourishes, with nearly all of the books about fabric related craft being bought by females and nearly al of those about wood or metalwork being bought by males.

Staying with a craft related theme I repaired the staircase between the shop and the flat above over the bank holiday weekend. This is something that I hadn’t done before and started by trying to find out how to do this using the internet, after some exasperation going from site to site trying to sell me a new staircase, once again I resorted to the books in the bookshop for the information.

Saturday Ramble Margate and Modern Art and Photographs of Margate in Kent

Thursday’s visit to Margate I have to admit to having a burger and chips at BeBeached (click on the link for their website http://www.bebeached.co.uk/ ) while she who must be obeyed went shopping.

BeBeached offers good quality food, drink, Wi Fi connection and is situated on Margate Harbour Arm, I am afraid that most of the shops that I used to visit in Margate have long since closed.

Where the harbour arm also scores over and above most of the reasonable costal eateries with a good view is the absence of traffic combined with the view across Margate Harbour to the town.

Sitting in the sun overlooking the town it is hard to imagine how things could have gone so badly wrong for Margate but a mixture of losing Dreamland and gaining Westwood Cross seems to have pretty much finished it off.

Apart from Tracey Emins recollections of teenage sex something I had just been made only to aware of see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/turner-contemporary-tracey-emin.html , the only other thing to mar the day was the increasing smell of rotting seaweed as the tide went out, perhaps it had been left to rot as a further assault on the senses related to some bizarre aspect of modern art that I didn’t understand.

Anyway I reflected on what our Tracey was trying to achive with her reminiscences of sex at 13, was it supposed to provide art though shock due to her age? I concluded that this was unlikely in view of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s age is as specified by the Nurse and Lady Capulet in Juliet's first scene as not-quite-fourteen.

Well I suppose if one was going to name the world’s most famous lovers she would come fairly near the top of the list, so this is hardly something that is likely to shock as we have had the last 400 years to get used to the idea.

While I am certain that Shakespeare’s play is art I wasn’t quite so certain about the video that Tracey had produced and by the nature of the Turner Contemporary’s funding I had had to part pay for without being consulted.

The Turner Contemporary appears to have pushed Margate Lifeboat into a somewhat difficult position, so in view of what happened to my car when I visited Margate recently see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/go-to-margate-to-see-turner.html I thought that this important item looked somewhat vulnerable.

There are very few rubbish bins on the harbour arm the two I found were situated next to each other, this also seemed to be a bit bizarre and I wondered if it had some sort of artistic significance.

In view of Margate’s aspirations to modern art and philistines like me having some difficulty identifying some of the artistic works, perhaps some sort of labelling scheme ought to be adopted.

Before leaving Margate I should warn you that what looks in the pictures like a traditional sweetshop, is actually an empty shop that used to be one with a picture of a sweetshop window display stuck to the window.

I believe this concept is known as inverse surrealism, and would be double inverse surrealism if the picture was entitled, “This is not a Sweetshop.”

Such is the nature of Margate at the moment that one feels it ought to have warning signs saying, “Do Not Adjust Your Mind Reality is at Fault.”

In case any of you are curious I gave the shell lady a light tap and she went boing suggesting that it's made of cast bronze.

Click here for the pictures of Margate

The Turner Contemporary Tracey Emin Exhibition

I thought I would go over to Margate and look at the exhibition in The Droit House, this time no one prevented me from taking photographs.

This link takes you to Tracey’s website http://www.tracey-emin.co.uk/tracey-emin-home.html

There was also a video playing in the gallery by Tracey called, “Why I Never became a Dancer”, about her sex life as a teenager in Margate.

The pictures could have been better but I didn’t want to attract too much attention by using the flash, I am also doing this from my notebook as it is my day off so I haven’t enhanced them, anyway here is the link, what you see is what you get http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510/id11.htm

Not Tracey Emin, I never stopped loving ice cream.

One of Thanet’s neon signs that I find hard to resist is the one on Morellis in Broadstairs, this ice cream parlour established in 1932 sells some of the best ice cream you are ever likely to come across.

After spending much of yesterday learning about contaminated gasworks, I headed off to Broadstairs for an ice cream, it was high tide with a moderate wind, not a good time to park on the harbour wall.

I should stress that this wasn’t an exceptionally high tide or anything like a storm, but still I managed to get a few pictures of the waves that weren’t too bad.

Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510/id3.htm

The last of the pictures are back in Ramsgate, both of the sea yesterday and progress on the gasworks demolition this morning.

I noticed on the Turner Contemporary’s website it says. “I Never Stopped Loving You is commissioned by Turner Contemporary with the support of Thanet District Council.” An amusing aside to this is the first time that planning permission was sought for Tracey’s neon sign TDC planning turned the application down.