» For art’s sake
Katie muses on the pros and cons of the art world’s notorious Turner Prize
There Will Be No Miracles Here (2006). Courtesy of the artist, doggerfisher and Haunch of Venison, London. © Nathan Coley. Photography: David Lambert and Rod Tidnam, Tate
A bear walks into a gallery. No, there isn’t a punch line, but there is £25,000 at stake. Is it a joke? Is it an artwork? Who can be sure? This is the Turner Prize.
The honey coloured bear, captured in two and a half hours of film as he prowls the rooms of the Berlin Art Gallery at night, is in fact artist Mark Wallinger. And this film - Sleeper – marks Wallinger’s entry into this year’s Turner Prize.
Sleeper – another name for a double agent – is intended to evoke the history of Germany and the Cold War.
dict, sent by the King of France to a village which had recently experienced a plethora of miraculous events, in which the king demands that no more take place there.
As a work of art, Coley’s piece could mean whatever you want it to, but one interesting explanation is that it is intendedto be taken as a confrontation to the expectations that people have of both modern art and – more specifically – The Turner Prize itself.
Coley tells us, mockingly, that we expect too much of art. And perhaps he is right.
Sleeper (2004-5), Mark Wallinger © Mark Wallinger
Because despite perceptions of the Turner Prize that range from stupid to outrageous, pointless to sublime, perhaps the most significant thing is that we should look to it to be any of these things at all.
Is Wallinger’s Bear art? I’m not convinced that even Wallinger could answer that question, but what is important is that he provoked me into asking it at all.
The Turner Prize 2007 Exhibition is open now and runs until 13 January 2008.
