Snuffling In The Art Worlds Bins

I am in the V22 gallery on Ashwin Street, this is their current ‘Carcus’ show, in front of me is Pam Horne’s painting ‘Second-Hand Rose’, I look for a while and think that the tears running down the girls face are incongruent with the rest of her impassive face, I am just beginning to wonder how I feel about this painting and write down a little note to myself. “Are you taking notes?” says a voice at my shoulder, a woman who is either something to do with the gallery or believes she ought to be is looming at me with a slightly quizzical expression and vaguely aggressive body language. I reply in a non-committal fashion and mention that I wish to remind myself about the work as I know that on leaving I will forget what I have just seen, she raises her eyebrow slightly and walks off, I feel she is unsatisfied with my answer but frankly I don’t know what she expected me to say. Perhaps, “Yes I am noting down every detail of every work so that when I get back to my art school studio I can copy the work but not before I drink every last drop of your free beer don’t let my 30’something appearance put you off I am in fact 19 and am going to steal these ideas and crassly present them as my own at my end of year show by the way I know I stick out like a sore thumb because I am here alone and actually looking at the work I know in reality that you think you are important and I am lowly scum and you are pissed off because I should have recognised you and have made a beeline to the queue of punters waiting to fawn and stroke your ego”. You know sometimes I hate going to these things, endless private view’s with attitude dripping from every pore and the slime of ego contaminating your shoulder if someone brushes past, the playground mentality and half the time people eyeing you with suspicion because they either don’t recognise you so you must be a nobody unlike themselves or they do recognise you and maybe you are going to find that elusive career defining contact before they do.
I feel like the famous scene in Spaced where Brian is preparing to go to Vulva’s experimental theatre/art performance, actually that is not just here tonight in Ashwin Street that is most of time, but enough of that back to the art.

I could go into detail about Pam Horne’s other painting ‘The Eve of Battle’, her work is of great quality and depth but it is detracted by the other Day-Glo scraps of ephemeral trash that litter the gallery, bows of false intellectualism that adorn black plastic sacks, art school rollup culture in expensive bleached denim and little bags of dog shite elevated to high culture lite by sprinkles of glitter. The best metaphors for shows of this kind come with the work, Simon Brundret’s mechanical dog sculptures draw attention and in the corner of the gallery is his dalmation snuffling scraps in a bin, if this were real the poor dog would starve because in this case the artists have got there before him.

I leave the gallery and on my way out the final work I see is Matt Brotherwood’s scrap of paper that says “Shut Up”.

Okay then I will.