Galleries

[Guessed]

I was in the town today; bit of time to myself 'n' that and I decided to poke my head 'round the door of GOMA.
GOMA is the (Glasgow) Gallery of Modern Art.
I haven't been in in some time (years maybe) and had heard there were a couple of exhibitions of note.

Entered the first room; downstairs, huge ceilinged multi-pillared affair.
Exhibition entitled "Tomorrow" by Fiona Tan who is apparently renowed for video, photography installation work.
This piece was a large projection onto a wall with a smaller projection onto a seperate screen in front of the large wall.
The image on the large screen were slowed panned individual teenage (16-18yrs) faces and on the smaller screen a slow panned group of same teenagers.
Fine...It was visually very dull, the kids looked like they were hand-picked from the local refuse tip, many of them needed a good scrub. A lot of them had a disconnected threatened/threatening pose. Some smiled, they were nice! The immediate thought in my mind was that these kids were an absolute cultural mish-mash. I dunno where it was filmed (the artist resides in Amsterdam) but I couldn't identify specific race. The artist is interested in identity and perhaps this was her point but the focus was more on (from notes/reviews) the proclamation that this was the new European identity. Honestly, I must be walking about with my eyes shut because this is not my first thoughts when imagining people from Europe.
Anyway, that was a bit tangent-y.
My point; further evident as I moved upstairs to view the "Unsettled Objects" exhibition was the absolute hush over the gallery. I looked at 3 pieces; a video piece by Emily Jacir a Palestinian artist who records her walk to work in Crossing Surda.
This is the up too 2km walk that she had to make daily to get too work. Inspired by having an M-16 pointed to her head at a check-point one day. A sculpture piece by someone I can't remeber which was an mask used to torture "psychotics" that had been depicted in glass. Finally Jenny Holzer displayed some neon LED "ticker" sign with words influenced by her readings/understanding/opinions on abuse.

So yes; MY POINT. Why with all this youth, this new Europe, this anger, rage, fear, energy, outburst...why was the gallery so quiet?

I've admittedly had a long-standing issue with "art" in "galleries" but it's been refocussed today.

I think i'm going to make a NOISE piece and sneek it in there one day.

B,
S.

[scratch]

The immediate thought in my mind was that these kids were an absolute cultural mish-mash.

sounds typically european to me..
apart from perhaps the basque, sami and some finnic people the european so called "race" is two thirds asian and one third african.

[Guessed]

The immediate thought in my mind was that these kids were an absolute cultural mish-mash.

sounds typically european to me..
apart from perhaps the basque, sami and some finnic people the european so called "race" is two thirds asian and one third african.

I need to start taking some notice when I'm abroad; it was a real eye-opener for me coming from Scotland where that is not the case. I also don't quite know how i feel about it.

Perhaps that was the artists point.

[scratch]

The immediate thought in my mind was that these kids were an absolute cultural mish-mash.

sounds typically european to me..
apart from perhaps the basque, sami and some finnic people the european so called "race" is two thirds asian and one third african.

I need to start taking some notice when I'm abroad; it was a real eye-opener for me coming from Scotland where that is not the case. I also don't quite know how i feel about it.

Perhaps that was the artists point.

sometimes I wish the abrahamitic religions should not have been allowed to enter europe at all.. but I guess we can blame the romans for twisting christianity into such an oppressive, horrible system.
but the ummayad and later caliphate of cordoba did help end the dark ages in a huge way. They didn´t care about some knowledge being heathen but reintroduced classical knowledge, universities as well as new science from India and elsewhere even China.

then again.. "What if" scenarios soon get silly since european identity always has been shaped and defined by its neighbours.
You can argue that europe was a mish-mash even at LGM. It certainly has been after..
more recently we have the indo-european languages. The huge majority of europeans (and indians, much of africa and modern americans) speak a variation of a language that didn´t originate in Europe.

anyway.. scots belong to the mish-mash as well.. that is, if you are a historically christian country speaking an indo-european language..