MARK LECKEY: "I become attached to something and it seems to
convey or question an anomaly that I'm trying to resolve."
In one half of his room Leckey presents films, slides and exhibition posters -
all separate works - while the other half is taken up with
Cinema-in-the-Round 2006, a film of Leckey giving a lecture about history of
art and the impact of images.
The critic's view
If you were brought up in the underground rave culture of the Eighties, as
Mark Leckey was, you will understand instinctively how fluid the whole of
reality can feel. As you move amid strobes that melt everything into an
endlessly mutating musical beat you feel that nothing is fixed. This,
perhaps, is the feeling that Leckey seeks to capture in his contemporary
take on the William Burroughs cut-up. He sticks postmodernism on the
turntable, spinning our culture like some mad DJ, mixing and melding
information to evoke the feverish creativity of the cross-bred contemporary
mind. Leckey asks us to consider what is real and what is not.
Visitors' views
I think that the thing with Leckey's room is it is presenting other people's
work: it helps the viewer to understand the ideas that are behind
contemporary art as it is now. In his lecture he starts with sculpture in
its primitive state and works all the through to contemporary practice. I
think he is offering a public service and he should be the winner of this
year's Turner Prize. His work fulfils all the criteria.
Cornelius Brady, 47, North London
Leckey brings pop culture and cinematographic culture into the art world and
explores the crossover between them. When I looked the show up online I was
surprised to see that he is on MySpace: I didn't expect that, but it's good.
He's bringing in areas of contemporary cultural interest that would have
been outside the spectrum of interests of more traditional artists. Today's
culture is media; cinema, advertising, MySpace and YouTube. Art always has
the problem of being seen as an elitist activity. Maybe he's moving away
from the elitist artists who are unable to relate to everyday media
experiences.
Edward Gillibrand, 22, Winchester
The basis for the installation seemed to be his love of these cartoon
characters. For me it was also about images, about ways of creating a moving
image. That was my interest, even if it was not intended. It seemed an
unusual means of exploring the moving image, which you would normally expect
to be done in a more factual way.
Graham Asker
RUNA ISLAM: "Do you look at a film? Do you read it? Do you
illustrate with a camera, or do you write with a camera?"
Islam is exhibiting three film works. The first, Be the First to See What You
See as You See It, shows a woman examining teapots, cups, saucers and
porcelain bells placed on plinths. Eventually she flicks the lid of one
teapot, and then pushes it to the ground where it smashes. The second film,
First Day of Spring 2005, shows five rickshaw drivers who seem to be waiting
for fares. CINEMATOGRAPHY 2007 uses the camera to spell out the letters of
the title of the film.
The critic's view
Runa Islam is an obsessive, inward-looking artist who specialises in making
films and video installations that explore and probe their own materials and
possibilities scrupulously. When is something subjective and when are we
being manipulated by an authorial voice? Islam painstakingly shows us the
ways in which the camera achieves its effects, letting her lens slowly
explore a building, for instance, in CINEMATOGRAPHY, revealing how disparate
fragments can be assembled into a complete picture. She blurs the boundaries
between film and sculpture.
Visitors' views
It is a very aesthetic approach to video. Focusing on the teacups film, it
was a slow process of teasing. It was very satisfying that the cups are full
when they are broken. I think it left me with more of a feeling than an
impression: it felt good, somehow, and I wanted to watch all of it.
Philippe Schlesser, 31, Luxembourg
BS: The first film was very clever. You are looking at these beautiful
objects, yet the woman doesn't seem to be appreciating them.
SG: She seems to be in a bit of a dream.
BS: The objects seemed so delicate, sitting on plinths, but she starts using
them: the suspense built up with everything that she broke. By the end it
was really powerful.
SG: [on CINEMATOGRAPHY 2007] With every film you are only ever watching what
they want to show you - and in this film that was made very obvious.
BS: In the other film it was fascinating to watch these rickshaw men
slouching around - you felt you had a real insight into their lives. They
weren't doing anything much, but the way she focused on each one
individually was very interesting. Of the four artists, she was the most
aesthetically pleasing.
Bronwyn Sheedy and Steve Game, Melbourne
Initially I thought the first film was banal, but it had a stillness that was
really unusual. The second film was too fast, but the third combined a
photographic quality with movement. The contrast of held stillness with
speed was fascinating. it made me look at things differently.
Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer
I loved the film where the girl breaks the dishes. She was beautiful, and she
just gently touched them. Why did she do it? It's not clear. But most of us
have wanted to do that at some point.
Joanne Pearson
GOSHKA MAVCUGA: "My work is not trying to make a statement. It's a
playful way of offering possibilities for a new reading. "
Macuga's Turner Prize room contains three sculptural installations that
reinterpret the work of Mies van der Rohe's partner Lilly Reich, who
pioneered new ways of designing exhibitions in the 1930s. The room also
contains a series of “assemblages” - collages of works from the original
archives of the artist couple Paul Nash and Eileen Agar.
The critic's view
Goshka Macuga creates a sculptural environment which, if it feels a bit like
the lobby of some corporate building, is probably because that's pretty much
what it is. Macuga is known for quoting and often incorporating the work of
other artists in her pieces. In this show she is looking at the work of
Lilly Reich, a designer who, though a skilled pioneer, was subsequently
overshadowed by her collaborator, Mies van der Rohe, who left Berlin to find
success in the US. Reich's glass plate and tubular steel constructions,
intended for an exhibition space in Germany, are now uselessly stranded.
They capture a sense of fragile emptiness, and through them we see an
alternative version of history.
Visitors' views
If I were a bathroom designer I'd consider the central sculpture a great
shower concept. The rest I didn't understand: I don't know why they call it
art. It seems to have rails around the edge for handicapped people. It's mad.
Enrica Rocca
The sculpture in the middle was intriguing - I liked it and wanted to know
more about it. But I didn't understand it. The rails around the side seemed
irrelevant. And the paintings? I giggled when I saw them. It looked like
she'd had help from her eight-year-old niece.
Simon Penman
I appreciated the central piece, Deutches Volk - Deutsche Arbeit. It's a work
that you can walk around, and as you do you see different aspects: it
reveals itself as you walk around it.
Maureen Measure, Leytonstone, East London
I was so confused by her explanation of what she was trying to do. She seemed
inclined to over-intellectualise - presumably we were meant to think it was
all terribly clever, but I just thought ‘I don't understand'.
James Scobie
I've just come from seeing Francis Bacon and that is still in my mind, but I
enjoyed the whole of this room. It was decorated with a rain design, and she
used grey and monotone to encourage memory. You could see reflections
through the sculptures, and for me it was easy to understand and I enjoyed
it. But as for the other rooms, we just escaped!
Sunkyung Jung
CATHY WILKES: "This is to do with the separation between people
and the impossibility of feeling what someone else feels."
Wilkes's installation, entitled Give You All My Money 2008, consists of two
supermarket checkout units on which are scattered unwashed bowls and cups,
and around which are placed mannequins (one sitting on a lavatory, the other
with a cage on its head) and objects including an oven, a ladder, some tiles
and some charred sticks.
The critic's view
Cathy Wilkes's installation, a jumble of fairly unremarkable objects left in
the middle of a gallery, comes together to create what feels like a
disconcerting theatrical set. The artist leaves the interpretation up to
you. Who are the naked mannequins at the checkout? Was it them who ate all
the bowls of food and licked out the jar of Bon Maman jam?
Wilkes plays with surrealistic juxtapositions to create a sprawling web of
enigma that grows more confusing and complicated the longer you look.
Visitors' views
You know that energy when you get really excited? Nothing here gave me that
at all. I didn’t understand the installation. They never do it for me. And
this idea has been used so much; empty tins and things scattered on the
floor — there is nothing new there. Probably the artist was saying
something, I have to give her that — but for me, no. Unfortunately, no.
Anula Arawwawela, London
I feel like she was making a social statement but I don’t think she was saying
it with much craft. I gather that it is a feminist look at things; these
caged women are doing women’s work in the supermarket, with evidence of
their shortcomings all around them — that’s what I took from it. But for me
there was no overwhelming artistic quality to itother than the statement it
makes.
Erin Adams, 29, Vancouver, Canada
This was really good. The mannequin sitting on the toilet — you could have
read that as so many things: the question is, what do you, personally, read
it as? To me it felt like capitalism — selling. There was a Sony battery in
a vitrine on the stove, and I think that I think referred to the global
markets. It was fun to read that.
Shahin Toosi, 25, London
I thought it was a bit trite. It seemed not to be exploring as much about
identity as it could have done – much of the installation seemed to be
saying the same thing in a similar way.
Sarah Kendall
This was particularly poor. I didn’t see any artistic merit. I know it is an
installation of found objects, but they weren’t arranged in any interesting
way. It didn’t even appear especially voyeuristic or personal to the artist
— as, say, an unmade bed is. It was just mannequins and jars.
Patrick Ward
Why did she collect so many ugly little things? Her house must be depressing
with all that junk hanging around. But I liked it.
Peter Smith
