Review of the Turner Prize 2012

This is a review I wrote for GRADmag, a bi-monthly publication which was released by the ArchiGRAD scheme to keep local architecture practices abreast of the scheme’s endeavors. The full review pits the opinions of another reviewer (‘the cynic’) against me (‘the sypathiser’). A slightly edited down version of the review in situ can be seen here.

When it comes to art I have quite an open mind – you usually have to these days – and armed with this and a sense of optimism I headed, with my cynical friend, to the first Turner Prize to be held in the North-East.

Martin Boyce

First up is Martin Boyce’s angular parkland – in this exhibit you really sense a labour of love, with Boyce repeatedly citing as inspiration concrete ‘trees’ which were created in the 1920s by Joel and Jan Martel. For Boyce, these represented a “perfect collapse of architecture and nature”, one of the themes which Boyce explores very subtly in the angular metallic ceiling piece which reproduces the dappled light that you might expect in a woodland.

This angular language of forms is transformed into a series of art-deco patterns which informs the design of all of Boyce’s pieces. The pattern in turn forms language itself; a twisted font is picked out from it. What struck me most about the exhibit though, was how this labour of love seemed to have morphed into psychotic obsession, culminating in the angular font being crudely scratched into his angular desk design. All work and no play makes Martin a dull boy, it seems.

Hilary Lloyd

Architects should take note of Hilary Lloyd’s work; listed on paper as using film as her medium, her pieces are actually nothing to do with the film and all about how you watch them. Most of them are repeated jerky images of a single object, which often have no significance other than perhaps being shinier or a brighter colour than their surroundings. The distracted style of the filming is actively intended to remove any meaning from the images, and instead Lloyd pays fastidious attention to the setup of the various screens, projectors and wires that allow the videos to exist. Whether it is craning your neck to look at a screen by the ceiling or standing next to a projector blocking your view, Lloyd’s art is not contained in the images on screen, but rather it is in the real-world experience of watching something.

Karla Black

As with all art which aims to produce a psychological effect, Black’s work is highly immersive right from the outset. The inspiration taken from the psychology of pre-linguistic children is palpable – paint is splashed and smeared, the colours are block pastels and the huge size of the amorphous sculpture makes you feel small. Walking under the paper cascade that leans up against the wall, you can’t help but think of forts made of bedsheets. The smell of chalk and bath bombs permeates everything.

The effect is so strong that for the first time in my life, the gallery mantra of ‘look, don’t touch’ seems restrictive, and I leave the room wondering what chalk dust tastes like. Black creates a nostalgia for a forgotten part of our lives absolutely to a t.

George Shaw

Shaw is certainly the people’s choice, and this is reflected not only in the fact that he creates photo-realistic paintings, but also the fact that the introductory video being displayed in the makeshift café shows him with a pint in hand.

Shaw’s paintings all depict scenes from a predominantly grey council estate near Coventry, where Shaw grew up. Viewers are quick to understand the bleakness of this neglected community and the tension between nostalgia and pessimism that seems to feature in almost every painting.

However I sense a slightly less bleak theme within the exhibition: whilst the authorities in their wisdom wipe out large chunks of community history (see “The New Houses” and “The Resurface”) Shaw frequently depicts individual acts of petty vandalism which tell a fascinating narrative of the lives of individuals (“The Assumption”, “Shut Up”), even though not a single person is depicted. What I see in the exhibition is an intriguing battle between the individuals in the community and the government and developers, played out using simply the artefacts that they leave behind.