Last week saw the grand opening of Margate’s long awaited art gallery TURNER CONTEMPORARY.
On Saturday 16th April, artist historian Rodolph de Salis and Ruby Slippers joined the crowds to catch a glimpse of local artist Tracey Emin and musician Jools Holland opening the doors of the gallery to an expectant public for the first time.
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| Crowds queue for the 10am opening. |
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| Rodolph de Salis wearing his Tracey Emin hat from the 2007 Venice Biennale. |
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| Tracey and Judy
‘The Victorians built a lot of Margate… much of the amazing architecture has not been preserved. Grade II buildings have burned down – desolate car parks stand in their place. What has happened to the beautiful England we once knew?’ Tracey Emin, The Sun
Margate was once the most popular holiday resort in Britain and while there are certainly traces of its glorious past visible between boarded up shops, discarded empty bottles of vodka and run down Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian and even Tudor buildings it’s a long way from ‘shabby chic’… There are great hopes that the £17.5 million investment in the gallery will give a healthy boost to the town which has indeed seen better days. The beach is fantastic, the light and the sky as inspiring as Turner found it to be and while the eccentric mad hatters tea shop found it acceptable to serve canned fish in the crab salad, we had a very fine fish and chips on the beach at sundown.
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The gallery was interesting if a little bemusing. Brian Sewell stated in his rather scathing review in The Evening Standard it ‘might be unnoticeable on the fringe of Heathrow or the outskirts of Slough’ and one of the locals likened it to a fish processing factory. As for what the building houses, there are 11 major pieces by six contemporary artists in a show which centres around Turner’s painting ‘The Eruption of The Souffrier Mountains, in the Island of St Vincent’. Daniel Buren’s black and yellow stripes ‘Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape’ framed the beauty of the bay magnificently drawing attention to the wonder of nature.
To have an excuse to visit the seaside and marvel in the art that is nature is for me justification enough for a visit to Margate. It will be interesting to see how the gallery develops. Let’s hope it’s not the white elephant that Brian Sewell fears. Have hope Britain!
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| Daniel Buren’s ‘Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape’ |
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| Jools Holland at the opening with photograph of himself in Margate as a child. |
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| Gallery goers marvel at Turner’s painting which was the basis for the works of the commissioned artists. |
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| Conrad Shawcross’ works |
Ruby Slippers British Adventures 