No Twist in the Turner

A dull year for art's most controversial prize

As an open-minded teenager scouring the world around me for ways to shock and subvert my somewhat mundane existence, the emergence of Hirst and his fellow ‘Britart’ posse was the perfect contentious band wagon for my contemporaries and me to jump on. Rushing to London to gaze upon the entrails of a cow, I hoped to be lifted onto a shiny new plane of artistic being... instead I left the exhibition suppressing feelings of nausea and feeling downright disappointed, reluctantly proceeding to check myself into a much tamer Monet exhibition.

These memories of disenchantment always come flooding back at Turner Prize time, an event that is more mocked than admired. Every year the biggest event in British art’s calendar fuels an aggressive debate over the state of modern art, as winners and losers have courted controversy with their elephant dung, unmade beds and blow-up sex dolls (pictured). This year is no different, despite a notable shift in subject matter. Just as politics appears to be monopolising the London stage, it has also infiltrated artistic circles.

Condemned in the past as inconsequential, needlessly confrontational and self-indulgent, the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize is dominated by serious artists tackling grave political issues. Jeremy Deller’s work has a certain temperate charm. His video exploration strings together a collection of interviews recorded on a visit to Texas. The documentary talks to an elderly Quaker woman on an anti-Bush rally, a survivor of the Branch Davidian siege at Waco and the owner of the local diner in Crawford, Bush’s home town.

Kutlug Ataman’s piece is a selection of six documentaries featuring six people discussing how they have been reincarted. Primarily, it struck me as a huge cliché and out of place in an art gallery. Indeed, I found myself nervously edging round the walls and diving under awkwardly positioned projector beams in my efforts to reach the exit door. A much more relaxing alternative would be to watch Panorama in the comfort of your own home, since that’s all it amounted to.

Artists Langland and Bell offer a routine examination of post-Taliban Afghanistan, one more suited to the galleries of the Imperial War Museum. They present a digital reconstruction of Bin-Laden’s former remote country gaff in Afghanistan through a succession of photo’s that have been turned into a video-game style virtual tour which visitor’s can navigate with a joystick. The exhibition curator Judith Nesbitt promoted it as ‘taking the adrenaline out of the arcade game’. Adrenaline and drive is exactly what the exhibition is lacking. Perhaps having the odd terrorist to shoot down at Bin Laden’s house would at least give visitors something to engage with.

Finally Shonibare’s offering of western images draped in material that looks African but is in fact Indonesian provides a colourful finale, but its comments on colonialism are insipid and repetitive. It does have the redeeming feature of being pleasant to look at.

This years change in stance could be deemed refreshing and because of that worth a look. The prize is more thought-provoking on a political level than ever before, but not to any hugely compelling purpose. Deller’s work is absorbing and fun, and clearly deserves to win, but only because the competition is so feeble. Indeed it seems the Turner Prize this year has lost its effervescent glow of controversy to a new era of bland politicisation. This year’s focal works wanted to be dynamic and revolutionary but are instead worthy, politically correct and aesthetically banal.

Turner Prize 2004 is on at Tate Britain until 23 December. Tickets available on the door

Horny Man Causes Trouble Online

One of London’s oldest museum’s has run into a spot of bother in cyber space. John Horniman was a Victorian tea merchant, Liberal MP and twice married philanthropist, renowned in his time for good works and obsessive collecting. His remarkable collection of artefacts from around the world was first opened to the public in 1901.

In 2004 however, it would seem that the name ‘Hornimann’ carries very different connotations. Museum staff have discovered that emails bearing his name are blocked by spam filters as porn. Web users attempting to visit the Hornimann’s excellent website have found themselves denied permission, reported to their system administrators or, worst of all, redirected to rather more ‘specialist’ sites.

The name Hornimann has never raised so much as a smile here at LondonTown.com towers. Honest…

Crowds Salute Olympic Parade

Crowds packed the streets of London to salute Britain’s Olympian heroes. Thousands of flags and cheers of admiration greeted the champions as they paraded through the West End. The eighty winning athletes proudly sported their medals as they made their way from Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square aboard five floats. Kelly Holmes and Matthew Pinsent drew the loudest roars from their fervent fans. Kelly came home with two gold medals and Matthew with his fourth consecutive gold. With such success in Athens the International Olympic Committee are hoping the parade has inspired Londoners to back our city’s 2012 Olympic bid.

Gherkin Wins Stirling Prize

Norman Foster’s Swiss Re Tower, or ‘the Gherkin’ as it is affectionately known to Londoners, has scooped the RIBA Stirling Prize for 2004. Derided when it was first proposed, Foster’s tower is the first skyscraper in London to be built in the sculptural mode that is the first signature style of this century.

Built on the site of the Baltic Exchange which was destroyed by the IRA, the Gherkin is a unique and inspiring testament to London’s spirit of optimism and innovation. Even the most skeptical of London residents have warmed to the building, which took shape with surprising speed and now seems to be an integral part of our riverside skyline.

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