Hi, my name is Joe, and I work at Turner Contemporary.
And today we're going to be looking at contemporary art
and thinking about what contemporary art is.
The film is going to be broken into a few parts.
The first part is looking at what is contemporary art?
The second thing is going to be considering
some barriers that we all have when we think about it.
And the third part is going to be a menu where we're going to be looking
at different ways of looking at art, seeing art and philosophizing about art.
We're going to start off by thinking about what the term contemporary art means,
and if you ask people, they come up with all sorts of suggestions.
We asked a few people in the gallery and one person suggested
it was anything after 1950.
Another person said, well, surely it was all contemporary all at once?
Another person suggested it's all been done before,
and then generally people were saying things like, oh,
I'm not really great with words, I can't actually think of a proper definition.
And probably my favorite one was it can be anything.
So to clear it up, I thought we'd go to the Tate definition of contemporary art, which is that it's
So now we've got that
out the way, and we all know what contemporary art is.
I wonder why
we sometimes feel a little bit nervous when we're asked about contemporary art.
The point of this film is to try and equip you with tools
that you can use when you're looking at contemporary art.
And the great thing is, you already have all of those tools, they're all up here.
For example, if I was to say to you, classical or punk?
Fish and chips or curry?
Chelsea or Arsenal?
You could come up with a preference for those.
And those are all subjective questions, and it's exactly the same
with contemporary art.
Art encourages us to take time to be present in the moment,
to take a step back and to challenge our assumptions even.
And that's exactly what we're going to be doing in a moment.
So we're
going to start off using a menu for art.
If you go to a restaurant, you have a starter,
you have a main and then you have a pudding.
Now, just as with any menu,
any time you go to a restaurant, don't overindulge.
You know, that makes you feel unwell.
What I want you to do is to dip in and out of this menu,
OK, and maybe have a starter, maybe have a main.
You don't have to have a pudding if you're full up.
So for starters, we are going to be doing our looking
part of the menu.
What I'd like you to do is to find yourself an artwork
and to look at it for as long as you possibly can,
the average person spends only eight seconds looking at a painting.
But I want you to do something that we call slow looking,
and I want you to try and look for minutes.
Try even five minutes.
And I know that's really hard because I struggle myself to do that,
but spend five minutes looking a single painting and see what you can see.
So for the purpose of this activity, we're going to be looking at
some work by an artist called Ellen Harvey.
And the piece of work is called 'The Disappointed Tourist'.
So what I'm going to ask you to do is to zone in on one of the paintings.
I want you to really look at that
painting and spend five minutes just looking at one image.
So at the start of your five minutes, you might even like to set a timer on
your watch.
I'd like you to look at the materials
that the artist has used and how they may have used them,
so you could consider things like the brush strokes that they've made.
Have they made the artwork quickly?
Have they used strong brush strokes or if they smoothed them out?
Is the paint thick or thin?
What's the surface like?
You may like to look at the shapes.
Look at the way the colors work next to each other.
Look at the marks that the artist has made.
Does any of this tell you anything about the artists themselves?
Move your eye around the picture.
Or are you drawn to one particular thing?
Now, look away from the image
and try to remember what you can about it.
If you're with somebody else, maybe get them to ask you some questions
while they're looking at the image and ypu're not.
It would be really interesting to see just how much of it you took in.
It may even be that if you were able to make a connection with that work,
you'd remember it more.
The best art is art that you can find a connection to,
that you can find a meaning for yourself.
So how was that?
A little tip that I've learned is that a really good way
of honing your looking skills is to
imagine that you're talking to somebody on the radio
that you're explaining the artwork to somebody who's listening to you.
It really, really focuses your mind and encourages you
to think about what it is you're looking at.
So now we're going to move straight on to the mains.
Now this is when we really take time to pick apart the artwork.
So for me, art is a bit like watching
a TV travel program or reading a good book.
It's about being transported like a tourist
into somebody else's mind and into their world,
and that's what this next part is going to encourage us to do.
We've already done the looking
and now we're going to really examine and see the work.
So without looking at the wall text, can you take a guess
at what the artwork about?
Those are your first thoughts.
When was the artwork
made and by what sort of person?
If you could jump into the artwork,
where would you go and why?
Where do you think the safest part of the artwork is?
if you only had five words
to describe the artwork, what words would you use?
If you had to give the artwork a title, What would it be?
If there are people in the image, think about what their back-story might be.
Now I'd like you to read the wall text
was your initial response anything like the artist's intention?
Here's a funny one whose idea was better theirs or yours.
Can you think of any connection you might have to the artwork?
It could be a memory, an experience,
a sound, a poem, a smell.
It's amazing what an artwork can evoke.
If the artwork could speak and say one thing, what would it be?
Has the artwork made you think about things in a different way
or from someone else's perspective?
For the
pudding, we're going to be looking at philosophical issues,
which again, can sound a bit daunting, but actually it's just questions.
So when I go into a gallery, any gallery, it doesn't matter what the exhibition
is, it's not just the, the sum total of paintings,
sculpture performance, it's much more than that.
There's the opportunity to think about all of life's big questions.
So the idea behind the philosophical questions,
these big ideas, is that I'm going to suggest some statements to you
that I'd like you to question and to talk about.
Big question, does art have to be beautiful?
And then that leads on to another question I suppose,
only good art is displayed in a gallery.
Everything is art. Art
has to have a meaning.
All art is equal.
Alan Harvey's
'Disappointed Tourist' is a large artwork, and I think it encourages us to think
about large issues too, to think about big issues in the world, for example,
is change always necessary?
I'm wondering also
is nostalgia always a good thing?
And then the real big one for me is will tourism
become immoral in the future?
So to finish, I'd like to ask
you have any of your thoughts and ideas been challenged?
Have you been able to look at things from a different perspective?
Have you brought up some memories that you hadn't thought about for a long time?
I'm hoping you've done all those things.
So if you did enjoy that experience, then why not come to the gallery?
It's even better in person.
You'll get a warm welcome and hopefully might even strike up
a few conversations about contemporary art.