Despite the lack of shock tactics, there is some fairly interesting work to be seen at this year's Turner. The first room is given over to Starling, whose 'Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2)' (2005) almost blocks your entrance to the galleries with its imposing bulk of planks, timbers and a rusty corrugated roof. Those familiar with Starling's work will know his trademark is the quixotic intervention, simultaneously charming and thought-provoking. The artist spotted this large found object on the banks of the Rhine and decided to take it apart, construct a boat from it, and use the boat to transport the unused parts 8 km downstream to the centre of Basel. The boat was then taken apart in its turn and the whole shed reconstructed. This follows in the steps of previous projects involving boats, architecture and transport, such as'The Mahogany Pavilion (Mobile Architecture No 1)' (2004), a Scottish-built mahogany yacht transported to São Paolo and inverted on its mast, returning the wood to its country of origin and making the vessel into a shelter.
Another labour-intensive journey is commemorated in 'Tabernas Desert Run' (2004). This installation features a jerry-built, hydrogen-powered fuel cell bicycle on which Starling crossed all 41 miles of Europe's only true desert, and a watercolour of a cactus painted using the cell's only waste product. Layers of local meaning accumulate around the actions: the desert is a centre for research into renewable power and its cacti are feral film props, imported in the days of spaghetti westerns. Tying everything together is a reference to Chris Burden's similar journey in the 1970s, a crossing of the real Death Valley on an underpowered petrol moped.
In an interview with Philipp Kaiser, Starling mentions Borges as a literary inspiration1 and there is certainly a parallel between the writer's preference for pithy summary of plot and the artist's minimal records of his labours. It is interesting to compare Starling with Francis Alÿs, whose 'Seven Walks' happens to be running concurrently in London.2 Both artists intervene in the world in amusing, intelligent ways, and their exhibited work functions partly as proof that the unlikely events they describe really did happen. In Alÿs's show, maps, photos, scrawled notes and videos document the process both more haphazardly and more vividly than in Starling's Turner offerings: immediacy is slightly lacking in these particular works.
Darren Almond has chosen to exhibit only one piece, a four-screen sound and video installation called 'If I Had You' (2003). Almond's recent work has explored the arena of communal memory, with a series of installation and video pieces based on bus stops from the town of Oswiecim, better known as Auschwitz, but 'If I Had You' focuses instead on personal memory. The presiding image is Almond's grandmother, shown in grainy slow-motion close-up on her first visit to Blackpool since her husband's death 20 years earlier. It was here that she spent her honeymoon, and blurred footage of the feet of a ballroom dancing couple evokes her nostalgic memories.
However, emotional engagement with the subject is marred by Almond's heavy-handed symbolism: the other two video screens show a lurid fountain, the elixir of life, and an illuminated windmill, whose mechanical creaks are a constant aural presence and reminder of 'passing time and the inevitability of death',3 according to the catalogue. The addition of a 'gentle … contemplative'4 looped piano track tips the whole affair over into sentimentality, robbing it of emotional power. If the music had some documentary justification, it would be less tempting to lay the charge that Almond has chosen the track just to manipulate our emotions - but given that it is a piece by Richard James, electronic music guru and co-founder of the hip Rephlex label, it seems an unlikely choice of record for a tea dance. It is a shame that some of Almond's other pieces, such as his long-exposure landscape photos taken under a full moon, are not on show.
Gillian Carnegie offers 13 oil paintings, fairly eclectic in date of composition and style. In some ways, the space restriction sets her at a disadvantage, in that her many of her works are parts of larger series. Thus, only two of what the catalogue calls her 'bum paintings' are on show: idiosyncratic self-portraits set at opposite ends of the gallery. It is difficult to see in these two, small examples the deployment of a wide range of connotations and painterly technique, as claimed for the series as a whole.
Other paintings fare better. The two versions of 'Black Square', (2002 and 2004), are thick, glossy, textured monochromes with woodland scenes worked in impasto. There is a delight in the physicality of paint and in the rendering of the textures of bark and wood that brings these larger pieces alive. The titles seem to refer to Kasimir Malevich's suprematist paintings, and, according to the writing on the gallery wall, Carnegie's versions are a 'retort to the macho, modernist tradition of the monochrome'. This oppositional stance seems slightly at odds with the paintings, which rather than retorts seem to be explorations of the possibilities of line and texture in an environment of saturated colour.
The still life pieces on show, such as 'Mono' (2005) and 'Waltz' (2005) are interesting for their steady reduction of the palette to brooding blacks and browns, whereas 'Voi' (2004) is another dizzily physical painting, with a hint of Impressionism in its origins. Nevertheless, Lizzie Carey-Thomas's catalogue introduction slightly over-exaggerates the radical nature of Section (2005), a depiction of an autumn tree with 'incongruous marks that serve no descriptive function other than to confuse a sense of spatial perception'.5 The implication that Carnegie has hit on a new idea by exploiting the tension between representation and its medium, thus 'attack[ing] preconceptions inherent in… [representational painting's] established languages',6 suggests that modernism in all its forms never really happened.
Jim Lambie's room stands in psychedelic contrast to Carnegie's studied and muted tones. For his mixed media installation, 'The Kinks' (2005), he has covered the gallery in one of his signature floor patterns, made with crosshatched lines of black, white and silver vinyl tape. Although the regular contours of the room make this incarnation a less awe-inspiring architectural ripple than, say, his installation on the floor of the Tate's Duveen Galleries (as part of the 'Days Like These' exhibition in 2003), the silver makes you feel like you're walking on mirrors. Three sculptures inhabit the transformed space, enlarged versions of bird statuettes Lambie picked up in junk shops. 'Four to the Floor' (2005) is tat writ large, a pink specimen of dubious ornithological provenance with mirrored handbags attached to its wings, sitting in a pool of red paint. 'Black Kestrel (Six Rorschach)' (2005) looks all the better for being covered in a thick layer of shiny black paint, which has also dribbled down its mirrored pedestal and onto the floor. Behind the tarry kestrel is a black Rorschach-style shape constructed from the mirrored doubling of silhouettes of The Kinks. Lambie prioritises direct experience over interpretation, and this room delivers it with a flourish. A sense of fun, and of the joy that the artist takes in his materials is also evident in an outsize blue cockatoo dribbled with paint like multicoloured pigeon droppings.
Lambie's sense of fun and Starling's perverse pilgrimages both help to dispel charges that this year's selection is boring. Raising the quality of debate about art is just as important as raising its profile, and although the lack of attention-grabbing headlines may have disappointed editors this year, it's good news in the long term for the 'democratisation of art', as emphasised by Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain, in the exhibition's opening speech.
James Wilkes
References
1. Kaiser P. Interview with Simon Starling. In: Kaiser, P (ed). Simon Starling Cuttings. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005: C10.
2. 'Seven Walks' by Francis Alÿs, at 21 Portman Square, London WC1. 28 September–20 November 2005.
3. Tant R. Darren Almond. In: Carey-Thomas L, Myrone M, Tant R. Turner Prize 2005. London: Tate Publishing, 2005.
4. Ibid.
5. Carey-Thomas L. Gillian Carnegie. In: Carey-Thomas L, Myrone M, Tant R. Turner Prize 2005. London: Tate Publishing, 2005.
6. Ibid.
