Tate Britain offers the best art experience for babies. Firstly, the Duveens – currently hosting the remnants of Phillida Barlow’s epic ‘Dock‘ – have the best acoustics ever. Perfect for getting to grips with your new-found voice, if you are a baby that is. Tate also frequently adds live elements and education events to their programme – many focused on family interaction with the work on show. I went to see the Turner Prize one weekend last month and there were dancers sheathed in Lycra body-tubes writhing around on the floor in the Henry Moore room. Occasionally they would assume almost the exact reclining position as the sculptures. Occasionally they would reach out and wave as my son, Dieter alternately shouted and stared in transfixed silence at the spectacle.
The Turner Prize show itself is tucked away at the back of the gallery. You have to pay to go in – with the Turner collections on show until 6 January 2015 – so it might not be on the top of your to-do list with a toddler or crawler, as these little additions tend to make art viewing either a laborious or simply impossible process. But this year’s shortlist offers some surprises and is worth the trip, perhaps only for its quiet galleries and deep pile carpet.
The winner has just been announced but that shouldn’t stop you visiting. Here is my take on the exhibitors, in the order in which they are exhibited…
James Richards is showing three works. He is best known for his work in moving image and the film Rosebud 2013 continues to show his mastery of sonic subtly – with a titular nod to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane from 1941 whose groundbreaking ‘lightning-mix’ soundtrack and non-narrative, linear edit is reflected in Richards’ edited and collaged moving image works of found and authored footage. He is also showing tapestrys and a slide installation of similarity represented images – the tapestrys of men photographed with street artist-turned-art world darling Keith Haring, who died of HIV in 1990.
Each tapestry centres the man with the Haring whose bespectacled face is cut off on one side inviting us to always question the context. The slideshows of re-photographed images of wound make-up from a grimas face paint manual I had when I was 10 reiterate his intention to make us re-look at the construction of images. But this room was bypassed a little bit, as Dieter crawled right on through it.