Being Cultured by Kennedy Angus;

Author:Kennedy, Angus;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Culture, discrimination, taste, government, arts, art, aesthetics, policy, inclusion, high culture, diversity, elitism, judgment, judgement, self, Kant, Arendt, freedom, society, value, conformity, tradition
ISBN: 1675025
Publisher: Andrews UK Ltd.
Published: 2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Margate

‘The brilliant thing about Turner Contemporary is that it has given people hope that things are going to change here and also put Margate back on the map.’ Tracey Emin, local artist.

The Turner Contemporary is a ‘dynamic visual arts organisation that believes in making art open, relevant and fulfilling for all’.[25] It opened in 2011 at a cost of £17.5 million. Whether or not it has had any success to date in achieving regeneration in Margate: well, maybe it is still too early to tell. At the time of writing, however, even the Non-Stop Pound Shop had just closed its doors, moved out, and stopped.[26] Peter Bazalgette, now chair of Arts Council England, though, sees the Turner as a ‘beautiful... far-sighted’ building and cheers its ‘sparkling exhibitions’ as well as claiming that the benefits of increased ‘leisure, tourism, job creation, education, regeneration... more than add up’.[27] Whether or not the 19 jobs he says the Turner has created plus the joy of some temporary contemporary art exhibitions offsets the loss of 2,400 jobs at nearby Pfizer, or those that will be lost when Dungeness nuclear power station is decommissioned, depends, I imagine, on how much fish and chips day-tripping Londoners can eat.

There is a deep cynicism expressed in Bazalgette’s wish that Margate Council emulate and rival Westminster City Council, home of the Barbican and the London Symphony Orchestra. Cynical too, given the reality of Margate today, was the decision to display Rosa Barba’s multi-platform film installation Subconscious Society which

depicts a ‘society’ trapped inside a deteriorating interior where the characters explore what happens when objects lose their functions and meanings, whilst being hidden from the crumbling, abandoned world outside: rusting boats, collapsing piers and rollercoasters, and deserted buildings rising from the sea.

Barba says of herself:

In my work I don’t observe reality; I am reinterpreting it in a certain direction by making very personal decisions. I don’t pose critical questions; I am trying to invent a utopia by showing political and social mechanisms set against technical mechanisms which are themselves fragile. The paradox which results from such a tension is used to posit a utopian solution to the problem, a kind of magic which stops time and offers a slowed-down view of otherwise hidden aspects of reality. It offers an alternative reading of the past and also the future.[28]

There is no permanent collection at the Turner: outreach is the name of the game reflected in the fact that the education room is a beautiful space - flooded with light from the sea - while the gallery spaces are bereft (maybe it is a blessing) of any natural light. £17.5 million is a considerable investment when it gambles on the ability of a temporary ‘kind of magic’ to turn Margate around. Building a gallery in Margate to honour J.M.W. Turner more directly through showing some of his works against the sea and sun that inspired them would at least make sense in artistic terms, although - if we are honest - it is not what Margate needs right now.

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