A moment of clarity

The internet is awash with dead and dying blogs, but let me assure you that wild talents is not one of them, despite all appearances to the contrary. Why only the other day I thought a deep thought and then followed that up by thinking (yes, twice in one day!) "I should blog about that". And one day I will.

In the meantime here is a photo of my new favourite statue, A Moment Of Clarity by Marc Quinn, currently on show at Turner Contemporary in Margate as part of their excellent second exhibition Nothing In The World But Youth.

Another favourite of mine is The World Won't Listen, by Phil Collins. (Not that one.) He filmed a bunch of people singing karaoke to Smiths songs and then assembled the resulting films into a loop that reproduces the running order of the album of that name (which was a compilation so includes a number of their strongest songs). The three jolly fellows belting their way through Bigmouth Strikes Again are especially fun. It's a warm and humane project, I think, showing how people from all sorts of areas of the world, Indonesia in the case of the installation at the Turner, can share an affection for an eccentric English pop group. A neat and entertaining way of displaying how we all have a common humanity and the singers are all loveable and quite marvellous, like Morrissey himself.

Another set of exhibits that caught my attention were some early drawings and paintings by Turner which are slightly naive, but very skilfully executed. Assuming that he was in his mid to late teens at the time I was fairly impressed. Then I worked out from the accompanying caption with his birth date and the dates attributed to the works that in fact he was just 9 years old. Downright staggering.

The first exhibition at Turner Contemporary, called Revealed, was about the gallery space itself: using light and open space very generously. This second exhibition is much more densely packed with probably 200 or so exhibits crammed in, and I will definitely need to visit again to appreciate it some more. The exhibition runs for another couple of months and if you're near Margate I definitely recommend it.

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/nothing-in-the-world-but-youth