Paperjam

Tate Britain, The Turner Prize, Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern

Art // Jim // 12th January 2004

Despite the best attempts of Chiltern Railways and their confusion between the numbers “2” and “3” when describing platform numbers I am at Pimlico tube station before midday. It is a quick stroll to the imposing Tate Britain dodging in and out of the cowboy-hatted tourists who seem to have lost their coach driver.

How much do I hate the Chapman brothers at this stage? Not at all, why would I?

I’ve never been to the Tate Britain, my main reason for being here is to have a look at the Turner prize exhibition, however there is a wealth of other stuff here so lets have a look round first, the highlights include:

A collection of the metal sculptures by Lynn Chadwick a lot of which are like geometric abstract animals. The piece called “Fisheater” is particularly interesting as it seems to be balancing carefully on its stand and if it slips and falls over it will probably kill most of a visiting school party.

Abstract red, black and white paintings by Terry Frost including a large installation which is well worth seeing.

The Sam Taylor-Wood video installation “Killing time” Featuring four films of very bored looking people occasionally miming to the epic opera music being blasted out, amusing and just a touch creepy.

Don’t be put off by the title of room 22, “An International Abstract Art: Modernist Utopias”, there is some cracking stuff in here.

Plus there are loads of those kind of pictures you tend to see in pubs of storm tossed naval battles and events from the book of revelations. In the flesh and at the proper scale a lot of this stuff is well worth looking round even for a philistine like me who doesn’t really like “proper” art.

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Anyway time to pay the £4 fee and have a look at this years Turner prize exhibits.

How much do I hate the Chapman brothers at this stage? Not at all. Looking forward to seeing their work.

After succumbing to the most smug bag search I have yet to experience I walk into the room where Anya Gallaccio’s work is. This is about time passing and stuff decaying, the flowers behind the perspex are looking pretty manky by now and that tree needs cutting down. I can’t be bothered and leg it to the next room...

Here is Willie Doherty’s “RE-RUN” where the image of a scared looking man running down the middle of a road is shown on two opposite screens. On one screen he is running towards you, on the other he is running away. The film is shot and edited in the style of a cinematic thriller and certainly adds to the level of intrigue involved. After a while you get bored and hope something else might happen, hurdles maybe?

Onwards to the Chapman brothers bit where they have wheeled out the Goya stuff again and done what most 12 year old kids would do with two blow up dolls. Best thing about this is the title of the reproduced etchings with graffiti on them “Insult to Injury” hee, hee, how droll.

Finally it is the pots made by Grayson Perry, definitely deserved to win, more by default than anything else. Each one is decorated by amusing, shocking and often sexual bits and pieces. I betray my lack of social standing by openly laughing at some of the content I take to be jokes, chin-scratchers all around stare at me with the kind of scorn usually reserved for kiddie fiddlers and Argentinean footballers. Time to go.

On the way out there is the chance to leave little notes and pin them to the wall, briefly weigh up how long it will take to spell out FOUR FUCKIN’ QUID? using one note for each letter. Get confused about the apostrophe and give it a miss.

How much do I hate the Chapman brothers at this stage? Smart-arses who almost certainly owe me a pound.

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Decide to walk to the Saatchi Gallery which takes a bit longer than I was expecting. Still, I now know how close Millbank is to the Houses of Parliament. After I cross the Thames and approach the County Hall I am accosted by some bird in a dot painting t-shirt who says I will get some free postcards if I hand in a flyer when I get in there “Don’t forget to say it was Madonna who sent you”, how could I forget?

Another bird in a dot painting t-shirt behind a desk clearly couldn’t give a toss who gave me the flyer (sorry Madonna, I tried for you). She hands over the postcards and tells me that it is £8.50 a pop when I try to walk straight in. “But....It is cheaper for students,” she offers condescendingly, checking out my tatty trainers, crap clothes and been-off-work-this-week beard. I glance back in what I hope is a pointed and gainfully employed manner and hand over a tenner, somewhere in a dark room I am sure my bank manager is falling to his knees and crying.

First up in the Saatchi gallery it is the Chapman brothers with “Hell”; imagine the window of games workshop laid out in nine glass cases. Thousand of little mutant nazi blokes do unspeakable things to themselves and each other in jungle warfare scenarios. Although I should hate this I actually quite like it, which brings me back to:

How much do I hate the Chapman brothers at this stage? They’re OK, should probably get out a bit more though.

After barrelling down a corridor with some more bits in (including the first of the incredibly lifelike sculptures which you can pretend to be friends with, a jogger sitting on the floor) you reach the room which is the main reason to come here. If the Saatchi Gallery can be compared to a porn film (and after paying £8.50 to get in you’ll certainly feel like you have been fucked), then this large circular room is the money shot.
Here some of the most famous pieces of art in recent years have been collected together:
- Damien Hirst’s shark which scares me rather a lot.
- “Hymn”, the big anatomical model.
- Tracey Emin’s scummy bed, really not very nice at all, makes me want to tidy up.
- The big Myra Hindley done with kids hand prints, still think this is toss personally.
- Cool Gary Hume pic.
- Sarah Lucas’s Carry On mattress.
- Scary Jenny Saville pictures for the Manic Street Preachers fans.
- That frozen blood head sculpture that you probably saw on the news.
- More lifelike sculptures by Duane Hanson, this time a pair of tourists positioned staring up at Hymn, require a second glance to confirm that they aren’t real.
- One of Chris Ofili’s shit pictures (in that it involves shit rather than it isn’t very good), this is the one that upset the yanks I think.
- Best of all is “Mask” by Ron Mueck big scary cartoonish face, cool.

Whether you like this lot or not isn’t really the point, it is quite something to see so many famous and often photographed objects all in one place together. You start to get a feeling of just how disgustingly rich Mr Saatchi must be.

Following this the rest of the gallery is a series of corridors with small rooms displaying a wide variety of stuff, things that stand out are:
- Dead rat deathstar thing
- The pickled sheep
- Japanese artist (can’t remember his name, sorry) who has tarted himself up as famous female icons of cinema for glamourous photographs.
- More Chris Ofili (shit and non-shit)
- Gavin Turk as Sid Vicious

Along the way are various Chapman brothers exhibits, more Goya rip-offs, the fake tribal masks having a pop at McDonalds (I’m sure Saatchi has never done any adverts for them) and of course the mutant children. After a while the mutant children start to really get on your nerves, the first lot you get to are really quite shocking and faintly sad. After the third or fourth instance (I’ve lost count) they just come across as the bizarre fantasies of the kind of artist who should really be doing album covers for heavy metal bands. I really can’t be bothered to get into it, however it is nice to hear a pair of prim, proper and thoroughly deaf old dears having the following conversation:

“ Doris, I say Doris”
“ Yes dear?”
“ Is that one over there ‘FUCKFACE’?”
“ No dear, I think that particular piece is called ‘TWO-FACED CUNT”
“ Not ‘CUNTCHOPS’ then?”
“ No that one is definitely ‘TWO-FACED CUNT’”
“ Right... I say, how.... daring”

A quick note on the clientele of the Saatchi, if you are a fan of posh, incredibly attractive women who flounce about the place, looking at you like the fox they were hunting last weekend if you do so much as breathe in the same room as them - you are in luck.

If you can stretch to it though, I have to admit the the Saatchi Gallery is well worth a visit.

How much do I hate the Chapman brothers at this stage? Don’t talk to me about the bastard Chapman brothers.

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Now it is time for another stroll down the south bank towards the Tate Modern, a bunch of kids doing the London equivalent of cross country stumble past. The fat/asthmatic/smoking ones at the back don’t look to happy at all, but I am happy to finally see some kids who aren’t fused together with penises growing out of their faces. I help these young scamps along by laughing at them and calling them a bunch of losers.

My cheerful mood is further buoyed when I arrive at (the thankfully free to get in) Tate Modern and enter the generator hall to see the epic Weather Project installation. Quickly sneak a picture or two and then walk the length of the hall, noticing that you can do a pretty good impression of those shots from the top of the buildings in North by Northwest by looking straight up at the mirrored ceiling. The amber light and general mistiness lends a kind of “opening scenes of Blade Runner” vibe to proceedings. The chin-scratchers forget themselves and lie on the floor, like a bunch of fucking hippies.

Have a quick dash around the gallery which is marvellous, if you haven’t been yet you really should.

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By now my blood alcohol level is reaching critically low levels and as such it is over the strangely slippery millennium bridge freshly adorned with traffic cones to a pub called the Centre Page (I think) near Saint Pauls. The barman takes pity on me and ferries the Guinness directly to my table, a drip would be good but a glass will have to do.

From there on it is more drinking, a mini Thai meal, drinking, a trip to the shops, more drinking, a really good attempt to lose my wallet in an Irish pub where all the staff appear to be South African and then it is hometime.

On the tube I play my favourite game of smiling at people without getting stabbed, back to Marylebone with minutes to spare for the last train. Journey home trying to look disinterested but yet a bit hard to avoid the attentions of the lovely young chaps sharing the carriage with me. 50 Cent fans, it would appear

Back home to prepare for the kind of hangover you only ever have when you know you don’t have to go to work.