TURNER PRIZE 2011 AT BALTIC

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead - venue for Turner Prize 2011

Let me start by making a confession: most modern art leaves me cold.

I understand that art has moved on from the days of yore, where painting was the name of the game.

And it’s not like I don’t try to like it. Every single time I’m in London, I visit the Tate Modern, and I regularly frequent Gateshead’s BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

I always go in to both with an open mind. And sometimes I even come out feeling that I’ve seen a really great piece of art, or a superb exhibition.

It’s just that – and this is very much just my opinion – good exhibitions seem to be few and far between.

At BALTIC, I absolutely loved the Spank the Monkey exhibition in 2006/2007, which showcased urban and suburban art and introduced me to the amazing images of Takashi Murakami.

I also enjoyed Mark Titchner’s and Sam Taylor-Wood’s exhibitions.

But, for the last couple of years, the art at BALTIC hasn’t touched me in the same way. It hasn’t made me happy. It hasn’t made me sad. It has just left me cold.

All that said, I was extremely happy when I heard that the organizers of the Turner Prize had decided to hold the exhibition and award ceremony at Gateshead’s BALTIC, only the second time the event had been held outside of the capital city.

So today I scooted down to the south side of the Tyne, hoping to find something that would scratch my art-loving itch.

It was good to see a large queue waiting patiently outside the Turner Prize exhibition on the third floor of the converted flour mill.

The four nominated artists up for this year’s Turner Prize are: Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw.

The first room of the exhibition is Martin Boyce. The central piece of art in the room looks like a giant mobile (the type you put over a baby’s cot). I want to like it. I can see some work has gone in to making it. The picture on the wall with half-formed letters is interesting. But none of it really does anything for me.

I move on to the second room. Here Hilary Lloyd has assembled a number of video projections and looping footage. This definitely has something more to it. One in particular – called Moon 2011 – is mesmerizing. It is two screens, which each show small squares of footage of the moon, shakily shot. Okay, that doesn’t do it justice, but there’s really not much more to it than that. And yet, it is one of those things you could pull up a chair and sit and watch.

But my feelings of happiness at having found a piece of art at BALTIC that I could enjoy quickly disappeared when I moved into the third room of the exhibition. What to say about Karla Black’s ‘work’? The BALTIC says she has an “innovative approach to sculpture”. I just don’t get it. It looks like the kind of mess the plasterers left when they came to damp-proof the walls of our lounge.

The final room of the exhibition contained paintings by George Shaw. While his work is traditional in one sense, his subjects – derelict buildings, roller-shuttered shops – are distinctly ‘now’. While I like the fact that someone who paints made the final of the Turner Prize, I left his room of the exhibition wanting to see what he could do with more interesting subject matter.

All in all, the exhibition is definitely worth a visit. I can’t promise you’ll love what you see there, but then maybe you will. I’m no art critic. I just know what I like.

One final thing to note. If you are going to the Turner Prize exhibition at BALTIC, and if – like me – you’re a fan of urban art, I’d recommend taking a five minute walk up to the back of The Sage Gateshead.

There, down the side of The Sage Gateshead’s multi-storey car park, is a small lane given over to graffiti artists for them to legally display their art. There’s also a small archway further along, directly behind The Sage Gateshead, being used for the same purpose.

And as I walked past today, a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings were busily working on amazingly detailed and beautiful and meaningful graffiti images. And my heart leapt for joy at having finally seen something that scratched my art-loving itch.

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What do you think of the Turner Prize 2011? Please feel free to leave a comment, or come and chat on Twitter – http://twitter.com/mr_matt_reilly

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