I’m advised that a column can be personal and opinionated. As some things just get me hot under the collar, I feel a sudden licence to undo one or two metaphorical buttons for this opening shot. I’m no showman, so it stays metaphorical.
The Sunday Times News Review gave Tracey Emin half a page of oxygen on 10 June, which she used to reproduce her diary in the lead up to the Venice Biennale. The article was dominated by a photograph of a smirking Emin with her unbuttoned blouse (no shrinking violet this) displaying a substantial décolletage supported by lacy bra. Not a pretty sight. Her diary was simply an opportunity for name-dropping – an awkwardly expressed list of ‘my friends’, who we now know include Jerry Hall, Damien Hirst, Mikhail Gorbachev, Naomi Campbell, Peter Blake (who, she reminds us, did the Sgt. Pepper album cover – yawn) and Elton John (named twice: once for each of the parties she met him at). She also took the opportunity to tell us all, again, that she was 13 when she started having sex, which was variously great, bad, violent and aggressive. What was the editor thinking about? What indeed were the British Council thinking about when they chose Emin to represent Britain? ‘Can you party? OK, you’re in.’
The inexorable rise of a ‘talent’ like Emin is a baffling phenomenon. This year, as a kind of weird parallel to Mick Jagger getting a knighthood or Bill Oddie’s OBE, she was elected a Royal Academician, an award which follows her work of the last three years or so depicting graphic images of her own splayed legs and what lies between. You may recall that she progressed from the Purple Virgin series (‘04), through Asleep Alone with Legs Open (‘05) to Masturbating (‘06). At Venice she is exhibiting, amongst other works, Legs 1 (in purple neon) and Fat Minge (‘94). Apparently, this is the cutting edge of British art.
For a different perspective, and with hope undiminished, I turned to the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery for their exhibition of new work from Highland graduates. The show was called Latitudes and claimed to showcase ‘the diversity and vibrancy of our most contemporary artists’. Well, whatever else it was, the show sadly failed to lift the spirits or generate any worthwhile emotional response. Lisa Hyland offered copycat Andy Goldsworthy pieces made from twigs she’d collected in the woods, Jenny McLaren gave us well made mixed media café-wall craft and George Glennie exhibited paintings ‘based around philosophic concerns like the concept of existing in time’ which looked like Rothko with a slightly sharper edge. Most depressing in terms of technique and content was Worried Man, a large and poorly executed piece by Gordon Brown. How appropriate is this?
Am I alone in wanting to be excited and amazed by genuinely new talent, by artists who aren’t fixated on creating maximum shock value or who churn out vaguely familiar images from the last fifty or sixty years? Emin’s roots, the YBA group, were responsible for all kinds of dross, which was cruelly championed by an extremely wealthy collector/investor. Those works were often transient and some believe were about challenging the nature of art itself, rather than being worthy examples of it. Now, as the most rebellious YBAs move to the very centre of the Establishment, art students and graduates continue to plod away, regurgitating history. Art investors continue to buy Punk art for storage in warehouses that might burn down, while the rest of us scan the galleries and find only My Version of…(choose any artist or movement from the last century) or the usual figurative stuff – by degrees realistic or impressionistic. Some of this is very good indeed although those who have something really interesting to say are completely outnumbered by journeyman painters and sculptors. Regrettably, the Warholian view that art is anything you can get away with has long been embraced by almost the entire art world. Pity the poor talent hunter.
My search for good new stuff continued at the Inchmore Gallery. Gwen Black is a consummate printmaker who also works in mixed media and has been making mostly abstract or semi-abstract pieces for several years now. Inchmore is her new gallery, just outside Inverness, where she also offers tutoring courses. At the grand opening in June some of her students’ paintings were displayed in the upstairs area, where the poorer lighting and reflections of gothic windows tried in vain to hide the often less than adequate techniques employed. For goodness sake, before a painting gets anywhere near a frame, it should at least be well made! The greater part of the gallery, which is a converted church, has been subdivided into room sized areas ‘so that you can see how the paintings would look in your own house’, advised the girl at the desk. How do they look? A bit like the tired wallpaper of life that’s been the background to decades of uncritical thinking. It’s been up too long and the room needs redecorating. Actually, just remove the walls and enjoy the space.
By all accounts Emin hasn’t gone down too well in the sinking city. About time, he screamed, feeling more comfortable by the second. It might be a sign that ‘shocking’ is also becoming banal, so maybe we can allow ourselves a glimpse of a post-punk era when real artists are once more recognised for their real talent. ‘What do you mean real artists and real talent?’ I hear you ask. I could spell it out, but Chambers does it well enough. Too bad that right now, north of the border, far too many exhibitions promising talent and vibrancy from contemporary artists are simply not delivering. I suspect this is not confined to Scotland. Who’s going to step forward (no forest brashings, video nasties, flashing lights, crotch orientated self-portraits, two-minute stormy seascapes or sliced up animals please)?
