It's 'Turner' time on Tyneside.

Visitors to Newcastle’s Baltic Centre will find a pile of crumpled paper, scattered chalk and plastic bags hanging from the ceiling as one of the contenders for this year’s Turner Prize, along with a wonky rubbish bin and ‘Humbrol’ enamel paintings of .. ”dystopian landscapes“. There are also shaky split-screen videos of tower blocks and a piece with the  “philosophical name”  ..  ”Do Words Have Voices” .. which features “an atmospheric, angular sculptural installation” a knocked about wooden table and a few bits of coloured metal.

Of course it wouldn’t be “The Turner” without the usual old gobbledygook from some curator or other, and this time it comes from Sir Laurence Sillars (I wonder if he is a ‘Geordie’?), who says the pieces ….  “interrogate urban forms and question how the act of looking is shaped”. Where do they find these ’arty-farty’ idiots ? 

My money is on the bloke who paints with ‘Airfix’ model paint and who’s works have been described by one critic as … ”miserabilist suburban sort of metaphysical painting“. His paintings include one of a dog shit bin and another of a demolished pub entitled (and I’m not making this up) …

… “The Same Old Crap” !