Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 October 2008 13:26:25
Today I popped into the DLI ; a local museum and art gallery with exhibitions.
It was an interesting experience, you never quite know what to expect in these places. It's set in some amazingly landscaped grounds with some interesting sculpture in. The outside of the building itself wasn't promising, it's the sort of thing that makes you think Prince Charles might have a point about bland architecture. Anyway having obtained my first student discount to get inside I looked around the military museum, with their displays of world war one and world war two first. They were interesting in that they were neither the moving - "never again" type displays one gets nor the "triumphalist" type that seeks to dominate in military museums otherwise. Rather it was a display which sought to focus on the ordinary. For me the most moving part of their display was a blank book with ribbons giving the numbers of the seven local men who were shot at dawn on. It was a very simple acknowledgement of sometimes we get it wrong and the victims of wrong decisions need to be simply remembered.
In terms of the art one can tell that I have spent too much time at the Tate and Tate Modern. The gallery itself is a good space but the works on the walls of galleries one and two really weren't my type of thing. As I entered gallery three I saw some hope with what I thought was a clever instillation, until I realised it wasn't. Rather along the back wall was a work top with a sink in, to one side were a pile of brightly coloured beakers, stacked up like a mini, multi-couloured wall, with a couple of normal cups lined up along side. To the other side were a pile of beige paper towels, stacked with a two odd ones to one side. Then next to them were a pile of black and grey gallery leaflets, to a slight angle. It looked like a beautifully arranged piece of modern art, in the same kind of vein as Tracey Emins's bed and Cathy Wilkes piece in the current Turner Prize exhibition .
Anyway, what I should have been focusing on in that gallery was a documentary film, which managed to hold my attention for slightly less time than the sink and worktop had managed.
As I walked away reflecting on my mistake, or misinterpretation I smiled as I saw the patterns the shaddows of the leaves were making on the ground, in the autumn sunlight, and the runners going past, preparing for the Great North Run on Sunday. I think art really is what you choose it to be and is all around us, sometimes "ordinary life" can be totally beautiful.