After a week of wandering around Frieze, scratching my head and trying to figure it all out - it was a breath of fresh air to walk into the Turner Prize and just immediately fall in love with the work on the wall. What I'm referring to is the room titled "Things Shared" by selected artist Ciara Philips who has literally covered the gallery's walls with blown up bitmap images of the accidental ink blotches from her screen-printing practise. Here is an artist who has exposed (forgive the screenprinting pun!) the process of her profession as the actual concept in direction of her shows. From what I gather it is a craft that is steeped in precision and the skill in execution, so this is a bold move to strategically disregard all the recognised guidelines and focus on the happy accidents in the waste. She gathers together the glitches and grafts them together in collages by cutting up, gluing and sewing. Its the actual physical act of pulling a squeegee that she's interested in and the essence of the hands-on action involved in finally showing the "Medium Is The Message". These abstract works are kind of mushed together in a manic frenzy of colour and mark-making. Perhaps its this organised chaos that I like!!! It's so free and loose but edited, not a mess (the layout of the room mimics the letters "OK" in the posters). In this new wave of post-Internet art, its lush to see someone going right back to basics and having playful fun with craftsmanship and testing the art-world's acceptance of having this as the primary context. Ciara gets the A.O.K from me!
Find out more about the 30th Turner Prize here.
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