It’s come around to Bloomberg New Contemporaries again and since these people are our peers it’s fun to go. Unfortunately, it was all a bit of a mess… First of all was the nearly an hour-long queue to get in even though we arrived at the start of the private view. Secondly, once we did finally get inside it was a fiver for a tiny can of beer! The show itself felt like it was curated by numbers due to being oversubscribed; every inch of wall was covered all the way around the room with mediocre (at best) paintings with a few floor based works thrown in to even it out. Chris Alton’s work was our favourite and only work we liked. A massive banner saying ‘after the revolution they built an art school over the golf course’ – funny, insightful, and truly well made.
Another event this week was Martin Creed’s solo show at Hauser and Wirth titled Toast. There are a couple of thoughtful ideas such as an excessively complex machine which only purpose is to wiggle a sock around on a plinth and an old classic of the intrusion/protrusion on the wall (a gold one for this show although we prefer the one which matches the wall colour). But these are minor features in a show which is dominated by awful paintings, truly uninteresting and unconsidered.
Next was the Elephant x Griffin Art Prize which was surprisingly good. We say surprisingly because it’s a prize exhibition of younger artists and they can be fairly hit and miss but everything seemed very well done; the curatorial decisions were visible and the artworks were varied but consistently high quality. Realf Heygate was our favourite to win, due to him being a friend but also because we’re really fond of his work. he presented a number of his small, highly detailed paintings alongside one of his videos of the same content. He’s really managed to crack the art code of making things which are beautiful and desirable/sellable and also have a great idea at the centre.
