Now, I am as much in favour of a pretty pictures and bits of sculpture as the next woman but modern art has me stumped.  I think I must be missing something, but I have never quite understood the artistic relevance of dead calves, rumpled beds and piles of bricks. My idea of hell is an evening spent at the awards ceremony for the Turner Prize.  But there is no doubt about it, there is a lot of art going on at the moment, in London, there is a lot of it about.

As anyone who has been round a modern art museum with me will tell you, I am not given to encouraging arty farty nonsense and other such ponciness. In spite of my principles I visited the Tate Modern recently to have a look at the latest effort in the Unilever Series – the Carsten Holler slides – or ‘Test Site’ as he prefers to call it.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/carstenholler/default.shtm

These were structures ordinaire and people were having a whale of a time climbing up to the top of the Tate Mod, getting into sacks and zooming down. This in itself is not a terribly unusual happening as one can go to a fairground or a swimming pool and see people whizzing down similar slides any day of the year. What IS the interesting happening is that somehow this is considered ART.  Righto…if you say so, Mr Holler, explain further please.

In the blurb on the Tate Mod website it tells us that

‘What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the ‘inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend.’

Erm yes – I certainly heard a few whoops of delight from the male I don’t share living space with as he whizzed down one of the slides.  I waited safely at the bottom and questioned the male about his ‘inner spectacle’ once he had peeled himself off the landing mats.  Unfortunately, the male is not given to introspection and just wanted to rush up and have another go.  I suspect there was some sort of inner spectacle going on somewhere for him, but what it actually was is still unknown.  There was certainly a visual spectacle going on for me as I watched people old enough to know better hurtling down these slides.  Several of these people old enough to be in possession of a free bus pass.  But again, this can be seen in a fairground or swimming pool any day of the year.

What is interesting though, is that grownups are able to get onto these slides and use them – without the presence of children.  Customarily, slides are places where one has to be accompanied by a child to get in.  But not at the Tate Mod – one can only assume that this is because the slides are ART, you see. 

‘Test Site’ was testing the boundaries of my tolerance with the first statement about visual and inner spectacles – but then it went beyond the point of no return when I read in the blurb that -

 ‘he sees it as a prototype for an even larger enterprise, in which slides could be introduced across London, or indeed, in any city. How might a daily dose of sliding affect the way we perceive the world? Can slides become part of our experiential and architectural life?’

It is patently obvious that this man has never put himself in front of a planning committee in any of the London boroughs.  Most committees baulk at the sight of a bicycle rack, never mind a hundred metre slide snaking between two buildings fifty metres above street level.  And, of course, if one slides down a slide to get somewhere…how does one get back?  Am I being pedantic here? Am I not being sufficiently arty?  Whatever, I think his chances of getting planning permission are about nil.

There have been a few other happenings in the world of London Art over the past few weeks.  There has been the traditional opening of guerilla artist - Banksy’s Santa’s Ghetto, in Oxford Street.  http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1961427,00.html .  Now Banksy likes a bit of a laugh – and the exhibition promises to be controversial with the Mona Lisa mooning, Michael Jackson offering Hansel and Gretel sweeties in his own Brothers Grimm cottage and a mocked up picture of Tony Blair taking photos of himself on his mobile with desert explosions in the background.  Downing Street have been less than impressed with this last offering – and have rung up crossly asking for it to be taken out of the window of the gallery.

At Paddington Station 3,500 clubbers congregated for a silent party.  They all showed up with their mp3 players with headphones in.  At a given signal, they all turned on their players and started bopping, gyrating and generally cavorting to a rave anthem.  Apparently the sight was even more surreal than what you normally see at Paddington Station in the rush hour.

However, I applied Mr Hollers visual/inner spectacle analysis to this event in a vain attempt to make some sort of sense.

       1.Visual spectacle – just what is the visual spectacle here? The silent      dancers? Or the bemused looks on the faces of astonished commuters who have quite enough to contend with without missing the evening train home because the main concourse at Paddington was blocked by thousands of people doing a good imitation of upright epileptic seizures.  So who, or what, is the art?  Having emerged from a black hole of analysis similar to ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg?’ I moved onto the second strand of Holler’s analysis.

2. The Inner spectacle – again, whose inner spectacle is the actual ‘art’ -  the dancers’ –or the commuters’?  We must disappear into the heads of the commuters and the dancers in order to find this out.

 Dancer – ‘yahoo!!! I am bopping in the middle of a station concourse along with 3, 499 others, holding up the commuters and generally being very cool and trendy in this ‘happening moment’ life is good.

 Or

 Commuter – ‘what the hell is going on, the station concourse is blocked, I can’t get my train, I am going to miss my dinner again, I am tired, pissed off and my children have forgotten what I look like’

 Or

Dancer ‘ wow look at the expression on the faces of those square commuters ‘

Or

Commuter ‘why are those idiots jigging around in the middle of the station concourse, has the revolution started, is someone going to call the police?’

One set of reactions is mundane, one is not, so just exactly WHO is providing the artistic entertainment? Are the commuters being entertained by the dancers, or vice versa?

Whatever, this idea is not original, it is a shameless ripoff of the original Dutch ‘silent disco’.  The silent disco traveled around the Netherlands to wide acclaim – but, the Dutch, being Dutch, did it small and tasteful with about 30 participants - unlike the Brits who did it big, brash and drunken.  In the Netherlands it was ART.  In the UK it was a reason for calling in riot police.  The organisers of the happening www.mobile-clubbing.com have another event planned where a monster pillow fight will be staged in Central London – see the website for rules.  If you plan to attend, DO read them to avoid arrest and public humiliation in the magistrates court.

Top of Portia’s list of recent artistic happenings has been the appearance of the knitted Ferrari.  A knitted Ferrari? I hear you gasp - Yes indeedy, bright red, made on a 1:1 scale, and every bit of it crafted in plain, purl, garter stitch and crochet.  It even has a dinky little thing that looks suspiciously like a parking ticket on the screen. 

This wonder has been put together by a 22 year old art graduate, Lauren Porter – who had wanted to make something knitted throughout her entire art course – only to be told that knitting was not ART, it was ‘craft’.

Oh-ho! I feel my feminist hackles rising! Is knitting only a ‘craft’ because it’s because mainly women do it?  It appears that Ms Porter felt the same too.  So she gathered together a group of friends and relatives and they all knitted bits of the Ferrari and Ms Porter stitched it all together.  For those who like statistics, it took 12 miles of wool.

So the bemused examiners at Ms Porters University were faced with a full scale bright red Ferrari – and decided it WAS art after all.  The Ferrari is now doing the rounds of all the trendy art galleries and people are coming along in droves to have a look at it.  But not only has the Ferrari been to all the trendy art galleries, it also had pride of place at the Knitting and Sewing exhibition and the Motor Show.

So back to Mr Hollers visual and inner spectacles.

 1. Visual spectacle – do admit, a bright red, full scale knitted Ferrari is pretty eyecatching – need I say more?

2. Inner Spectacles – This piece provides many as many inner spectacles as it has viewers.

 

Bloke – Cor! Look at that, it’s a full scale model of a Ferrari made by a girlie out of wool, remarkable!

 Or

 Old Lady – the garter stitch detailing on that spoiler is quite something

Or

Statistics Geek – there are 12 miles of wool in that Ferrari, I must remember that

Or

Art Student – I am most definitely making that scale copy of the Forth Bridge out of milk bottle tops for my finals!

Or

Tradesman – some bastard has just put a parking ticket on this piece of art!

 

I showed a picture of the knitted Ferrari to the male I don’t share living space with and asked him ‘is this ART?’

With some trepidation (knowing my views) he said…’well Portia, yes it is…its sort of conceptual art’

‘Good!’ I said ‘I think it’s Art too’.

Male breathes a sigh of relief and begins to hope that Portia might finally be getting the hang of this art stuff and is not the complete philistine that he always thought she was.