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Turner Prize 2012 shortlist announced

1 May 2012

Another year, another Turner. This year’s four potential £25K winners are…. (in no particular order… you know how objective we are): Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price. But because we aren’t objective enough we shall give this year’s jury a few recommendations right?

Paul Noble - Public Toilet - 1999 (Paul Noble - Gagosian - London)
Paul Noble - Public Toilet - 1999 (Paul Noble - Gagosian - London)

Starting with our favorite up above: Mr Paul Noble, the surreal architecture & scatological drawing master who was nominated for his 2011 solo show at London’s Gagosian Gallery: “Welcome to Nobson”. An exhibition around Nobson Newtown, his fictional city composed of  labyrinthine edifices and deserted topography embedded with modules of dense detail. Such complex structures that tend to mix the worst and most divine features of human species much like Bosch and Bruegel did in the 16th century. The most perverted of all 4, the one who should definitely ear the cash.

Welcome to Nobson (2011) installation shot at the Gagosian Gallery
Welcome to Nobson (2011) installation shot at the Gagosian Gallery

Although wickedness aside the jury believes all nominees share “a common sense of humanity and lack of arrogance” as well as an interest in the 1960s and 1970s – decades when they were growing up. How about the other 3?

Luke Fowler, All Divided Selves, 2011( Photo Courtesy of the artist, The Modern Institute - Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne)
Luke Fowler, All Divided Selves, 2011( Photo Courtesy of the artist, The Modern Institute - Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne)

Luke Fowler (the youngest of all 4 and famous for his mixages of found footage with own material) has been shortlisted for his exhibition at Inverleith House in Edinburgh which showed his third film  from a trilogy about the late Glaswegian psychiatrist RD Laing ( who espoused views that challenged the psychiatric orthodoxy).

The other filmaker Elizabeth Price was nominated for her show at the Baltic in Gateshead, whose exhibition will remain open until late this month.

Elizabeth Price, User Group Disco, 2009 (Photo by Elizabeth Price, courtesy MOTInternational, London)
Elizabeth Price, User Group Disco, 2009 (Photo by Elizabeth Price, courtesy MOTInternational, London)

And to shake things a bit (because we also love this last one)  Spartacus Chetwynd (well known for off-the-wall performance pieces) has been nominated for her solo exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, London, “Odd Man Out”, creating once again her a carnivalesque performance involving handmade costumes and sets and blurring the boundary between performer and spectator and improvising improvising improvising!

Spartacus Chetwynd - still from his performance Odd Man Out (2011)
Spartacus Chetwynd - still from his performance Odd Man Out (2011)

This year’s nominees exhibition is back to London and will be held @ Tate Britain opening on 2 October 2012. The winner will then be announced at the same museum 2 months after: on Monday 3 December. Good luck folks!

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Soldiers at Rye

22 April 2011
Soldiers at Rye (1941) by Edward Burra

Burra is without any doubts one the UK’s watercolour masters, but at the same time one of those magnificent Brit painters often written out of the story of 20th-century art. Tate hasn’t done a a retrospective of his works since 1973 but a few of his best pieces like this carnivalesque representation of the war horrors can be seen at the current “Watercolour” exhibition @ Tate Britain (until August 21st).

We’re not that big fans of the exhibition as a whole (and won’t criticize it because we’re not here for that) but there are some amazing pieces from the colonial scientific exploration (Sydney Parkinson’s plant drawings…) or the XX century war coverage (the nasty but precise facial disfigurements) that you’re only able to see when Tate decides to pull them out of their drawers… and that’s once each 3 decades so….

Burra's The Snack Bar 1930

But going back to Mr Burra… the half surrealist – half modernist, half painter – half-costume designer deserves another retrospective @ Tate, because it’s been nearly 40 years since London really paid attention to his works, just before dying in 1976.

Burra's Dancing Skeletons 1934

He never found a place in the contemporary British art history, maybe because he travelled too far away? or because he flirted too much with the urban underground rather than contemplating the landscape? or simply… because he preferred watercolour to oil..?

In any case, while you can see many of his works on-line thanks to the wonders of technology & the courtesy of the Tate Collection, and while we wait for another dedicated exhibition @ Tate (it’s about time Mss Curtis….), maybe you should consider paying those 11£ for a bit of gum arabic + gouache + vellum surprises, and some of Burra’s best pieces.

Harlem 1934
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