Course Trip to London//The Late Turner

Day two in London was by far the best day of the trip for me. Lise Autogena, Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at Sheffield Hallam, and one of the tutors on the trip, had organised free entry to the Late Turner and Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Britain, an offer obviously too good to refuse. The day started extremely stressful, as me and a group of friends were forced to embark upon our first solo tube journey (including a change) to the Tate Britain after the group left earlier than we had expected. None of us were used to travelling the tube alone, and the instructions we had received on how to get there were confused and ambiguous, so we had to do a lot of guessing. But luckily with the help of a tube map and some guess work, we made it to the right tube station at the same time as the rest of the group, who guided us to the gallery. Stress over!

First, we saw the Late Turner exhibition. The exhibition included a large selection of JMW Turners paintings from the last years of his life, and showed how his creative process changed as he grew older and came to the end of his life. Turner has always been a painter who stuck out to me as one of the greatest, but after experiencing this exhibition and seeing his work in the flesh, I have become fascinated and obsessed with the sheer beauty of his paintings. The main themes through out all of Turner's work are natural light, colour, landscape and travel. He spent a large amount of time travelling Europe and painting the different landscapes and scenery where ever he was. The way Turner uses colour to create almost blurry, abstract brush strokes yet achieve fabulous detail of such fine scenery is amazing. The focus point, more often than not, is the sun and natural light spreading through nature; the sun being captured with most delicate yet bold colour. Oil paints and watercolour paints were Turner's most used medium, occasionally switching and experimenting with gouache and graphite. As I walked around the exhibition I could clearly see how his later works differentiated from his earlier paintings, they become more bold and experimental, developing further his already controversial and shocking way of working. All of Turner's paintings are so passionate and powerful, that walking around six rooms filled with his work is extremely emotive and mystifying, I came out of the exhibition feeling amazed and touched, privileged to have seen such a beautiful collection of work; exactly how I wish to be feeling when I have seen art in a gallery.

The Tate Britain

The Tate Britain

The Late Turner Exhibition

The Tate Britain

Next stop at the Tate Britain was the Turner Prize 2014 exhibition. I was not particularly overwhelmed by the four artists or their work shown in the exhibition, nothing really stood out to me as Turner Prize worthy. The exhibition is dominated by video installations, with only one textiles and print based artist.
James Richards; one piece of video art displayed in a dark room where the colour scheme was stylish grey, black and white. The video was shown on a large black, sleek TV screen with comfortable benches for the public to sit and view it from. The subject matter was ambiguous, strange pornographic, provocative images. The next part of the exhibition consisted of three slide projectors, projecting changing images of body parts being harmed or cut.
Tris Vonna-Mitchell; two selections of photographs, one with copies of repetitive poems, the other of mundane objects. There was also projections of abstract images with the audio of a man talking over the top.
Ciara Phillips; a whole room decorated with colourful prints used as the wallpaper, turning the whole room into the piece of art work.
David Campbell; before you walk into the exhibition space and you are stood reading the artist description, you hear strange recorded voices and noises, automatically triggering intrigue and thoughts about what you will see around the corner. What you see is a projected video of mainly a plain background, occasionally with patterns, doodles and shapes appearing, along with a very ambiguous piece of audio recording over the top. In the next room, a dark purple room with a bench in front of a large screen, was another video piece. This video piece involved a large number of single images and clips of historical objects, from what I would say was 1950's-2000's. Alongside the video piece was the voice narrating the objects and ideas that accompanied them. The narrative was very strange, never really reaching a point, and was hard to follow.