That's an adjective I've heard used a few times this week, and it was one that perfectly atriculated my opinion of Tate Britain's Turner Prize exhibition which was back in London following its visit to last year's UK City of Culture, Hull.
Paradoxically however, the experience could also be described as overwhelming. How so? Just the sheer amount of videos to watch. The guy on the door said a visitor would need to spend four hours in there to see everything and time was not with me. Neither were toilet facilities. Four hours without a piss? At my age? Do me a favour.
So it was a case of picking and choosing and, just maybe, this didn't do this year's finalists justice - but, truth be told, they were all a little boring. Which is a shame as the curators had clearly raised their game from the toy trains, piles of crap, and gigantic golden arses of 2016. Bearing in mind, the absolute shitstorm of a year it's been politically, it makes a lot of sense that this was an altogether more serious, considerably more sombre, show.
Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)
So the intentions were very good but the execution was sorely lacking. It's not that politics is, per se, boring. You only have to look at how exciting, and fun, demonstrations can be. I was on the Women's March in 2017 and, again, at the march for a People's Vote a few weeks back. Both occasions showed humanity at its best, uniting together as one to make their voices heard and having fun while doing it.
Some of the placards and art created for these exhibitions was far more powerful than the stuff you're likely to see adorning gallery walls too. But that doesn't mean there's no place for political art in galleries and institutions. There was a wonderful Peter Kennard retrospective at the Imperial War Museum in 2016 and that museum, as well as showing off the hardware of war, does a great job in tracing the story of how and why we keep getting ourselves stuck into these deadly conflicts. They look at the people behind the tanks, rockets, and bombs - and they're all the more affecting for it.
The Turner Prize exhibition is comprised of four galleries that you enter through various openings leading off from a central room complete with comfy furniture and a selection of literature to leaf through. Books, one presumes, that the curators consider to be related to, or supplementary to, the exhibition. There's a Tariq Ali attack on centrism, Utopia by Thomas More, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and a paperback of Watership Down. I wasn't quite sure how they all fitted in, to be honest.
The first room I entered belonged to the somewhat academically named Forensic Architecture. An 'international research agency that uses innovative technological and architectural processes to investigate allegations of state and corporate violence". There's a lot of them and they collaborate with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN so you don't doubt they're good eggs. But good artists? The jury is out.
Using open source software, digital mapping, and 3D modelling alongside witness testimony they are known to provide both courtroom and parliamentary evidence and the collection of films, written evidence, and oral accounts that bedeck their room certainly prove how thorough they are.
But, as someone who knows next to nothing about the Bedouin communities of the Negev desert in southern Israel or, indeed, the police activity that has resulted in their deaths, they don't really give me an 'in'. I don't know where, or how, this story started so I can't pick it up halfway through. They've assumed a deeper knowledge on the visitor's part regarding the subject than most will have. It's like watching an episode of a soap opera you've never seen before. You don't know who the characters are. You don't know the backstories. With Forensic Architecture I know I should care but I really struggle to actually care. Which was a shame.
Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)
Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)
Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)
All the artists on show were, primarily, video artists and Charlotte Prodger was probably the least political of the bunch. It was somewhat self-indulgent (but, hey, most art is) but it was still probably the most interesting thing I saw during my afternoon visit.
BRIDGIT was a manageable thirty-three minute long film that explored Prodger's own queer identity whilst also branching out into the Aberdeenshire countryside, ancient megaliths, and nineties rave culture. There were some lovely shots of local greenery and lakes and Prodger's reflective narration was both relaxing and reasonably interesting. So much so that at one point I nearly dropped off.
Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)
Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)
Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)
Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)
It's probably a sad reflection on an exhibition that possibly the most interesting thing in it could cure insomnia. While Prodger's work was the most interesting I'd contend that the films of Luke Willis Thompson were the most powerful.
Willis Thompson's three films lend dignity to those who have been denied it by society or the state. Each still image fills an entire wall (sadly, it's not possible to ascertain which is which - hence the way I've titled them) and shows a selection of people whose family members have been shot and killed by the police.
Willis Thompson's three films lend dignity to those who have been denied it by society or the state. Each still image fills an entire wall (sadly, it's not possible to ascertain which is which - hence the way I've titled them) and shows a selection of people whose family members have been shot and killed by the police.
The officer involved was acquitted of all charges. The tranquility and the darkness of the room, as well as the size of the portraits, makes this a very sincere memorial to those who have passed and a firm indictment of the corrupt, violent, and racist systems that allow this to continue to happen.
But, and it almost feels curmudgeonly to say so, it offers little in the way of answers. It's not art's job to answer questions but to ask them, yet one can't help leaving thinking these appalling and deadly miscarriages of justice must be brought to an end and, hopefully, that was the take away message Willis Thompson wanted to leave us with. If so he has succeeded.
Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)
Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)
I'm really not sure what Naeem Mohaiemen wanted us to take away. His films weren't dull but they were bloody long. Eighty-nine and ninety-three minutes is just too much, too big an ask and I'm afraid to say I wasn't as methodical and conscientious as I have previously been in service to this blog.
Two Meetings and a Funeral used three screens to tell a story, of sorts, about the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. I couldn't really work out what was going on but it was interesting to see appearances from various world leaders and assorted bogeymen of the West. Hey, that's Fidel Castro. Ah, is that what Anwar Sadat looked like? Blimey, doesn't Muammar Gadaffi look young, and quite handsome too in those army fatigues?
Tripoli Cancelled claims to be a 'fiction film' that follows the daily routine of a man who has lived in an abandoned airport for a decade, based on a tale Mohaiemen's father told him of being stranded in Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens for nine days in 1977 after losing his passport.
Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)
Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)
Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)
Naeem Mohaiemen - Tripoli Cancelled (2017)
I came away thinking the Turner Prize is having a bit of an identity crisis. It doesn't seem to really know what it is, and in trying to be all things to all visitors ends up leaving people a bit confused, a bit nonplussed. If I want to get politically enraged I can watch documentaries on the House of Saud or the Assad family. Or I could read the paper, watch the news, go on Twitter or Facebook. Or even engage my family in a conversation about Brexit. I guess I'd visited the Tate hoping this political art would move me but, alas, it did not. It felt for the most part, in this era of shouting and not listening, of yet more sound and fury which, as Shakespeare told us centuries ago, can only signify nothing.
For me the winner should either be Charlotte Prodger or Luke Willis Thompson but, for the most part, this was a missed opportunity to show some hard hitting, politically powerful, art to an audience that may have not been seeking it out. Instead, as you can read below, most people left describing the show as 'dull', 'narrow', 'unengaging', and 'boring'.
Political art can work - and can work very well. I've been moved almost to tears visiting shows by Gideon Mendel and Bouchra Khalili in the last two years. But, sadly, this year's Turner Prize, for the most part, left me cold - and with a bladder fit to burst.
Underwhelming.
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