Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern

Black Kites, 1997. � Gabriel Orozco. Courtesy Tate Modern.

When TJ and I arrived in Paris last October for our 20-hour Nuit Blanche art bender, we readied ourselves for the eve ahead with a can of coke and a cigarette. Sitting in the square outside the Pompidou, TJ noticed a camera on a tripod a few yards away. Obligingly, I went over to investigate. There were signs taped down in front of the camera instructing readers of said sign to pose for a self portrait. A camera remote sat nearby for just that purpose. We excitedly snapped a few too many silly poses before skipping off into the white night, but frustratingly, I never found out who the artist was or what the project was, or even whether the thing was an arts project at all.

On our way to Notre Dame, I remember we pressed our faces up against the glass walls of the Pompidou to reveal the secret of the shadows we could barely make out while walking past. In a large room, we saw a fan whizzing around with rolls of white toilet paper elegantly swooshing down like a rhythmic gymnast�s ribbon. We saw a Citro�n DS with the middle cut out, then smushed back together like an oreo cookie without any filling. We both recognised the car but, between the two of us, we couldn�t manage the artist�s name. When the press release for the Gabriel Orozco show at the Tate Modern went round, the images clicked and I realised whose work we�d seen through the Pompidou�s windows.

I want to like this show. But I don�t. It depresses me. It�s like going on a first date with someone whose photos you�ve only seen on Facebook. Online, he�s not half bad; a bit pretty, witty messages. But when you�re across the table at The Ambassador, his prettiness is nice enough and his chat�s alright but by the time the starters have been cleared away the conversation�s flagging and relatively pretty just isn�t good enough. It�s not that this show is offensive or tedious or really, truly horrible, but that it�s empty. Like my terrible blind date metaphor, it�s empty but trying to hint at meaning through tired clich�s.

Relativism�s such a pain in the ass. It�s done the art world little good. The nightmare that is post modernity resulted in an approach that says it doesn�t matter what�s �good� or �bad� because everyone�s opinion is equally valid. I�m open to being wrong, but this strikes me as a load of old hair-loss replacement bollocks. Sure, we don�t all have to agree on what�s �good� � there would hardly be a need for art if that were the case � but criticism by its very definition must assume that some works of art are more worthy than others. Contrary to relativistic dogma, it�s a critic�s job to make judgements, but the increasing power of institutions and PRs means that most �criticism� tends to be expressed as art history or back-slapping positivity. Not that either of those are intrinsically bad � I love a good bit of back-slapping positivity and I love being excited about things � but reading the newspapers, magazines, and even blogs, you�d think that every single art show was an absolute masterpiece.

I�m getting a little side tracked.

One of Orozco�s more visually striking pieces, Black Kites, is a human skull with a drawn on black and white geometric pattern. The skull is wonderful to look at, briefly, but it has no power as a work of art. It solicits no emotional response, no feeling; it�s like looking at a trinket in a curiosity shop. So you can understand why I�m not comfortable when critics and curators say things like: �the skull, an organic reality, engages with and parries the attempt of the artist to impose a system, a sense of regularity and order.� Why do people still write like this? What does �organic reality� even mean? Here the truism holds that clouded language denotes clouded thought: such a statement entirely neglects the fact that nature has its own set of systems and rules, its own order. A black and white pattern isn�t �reason� to the skull�s �uncertainty�.

I look at Black Kites and I see a skull with a pretty pattern on it. That�s it. Nothing more. It doesn�t make me think about life, art, death, desire; but what Dave Hickey calls 'scholastic post-minimalism - "fast art" designed for the institutional, white-box quick-take.'

With so many of Orozco�s works, the concept or process has been privileged � chopping the middle out of a Citro�n DS and putting it back together, tracking down matching yellow scooters to photograph them as a pair, filling a chess board with nothing but rooks, displaying an empty shoebox, taking photographs of the steam of breath on a piano, extracting amusing phrases from obituaries to write out on banners � to the detriment of the visual effect of the physical work.

There�s nothing here to look at. In effect this exhibition is a promenade piece: it�s contemporary art that�s the product of a society with no attention span. You can amble through the entire show without stopping to pause for a single sustained look.  Hickey again perfectly encapsulates my desire for more than just food for thought: �I want an image that I can keep looking at, some kind of sustained eloquence, an image that perpetually exceeds my ability to describe it.�

This probably isn�t the place to get into a discussion about the importance of beauty, and I mean beauty as something that provokes a physical response, not simply as a box-ticking set of aesthetic guidelines, but art needs more than surface tricks to mean something, to move someone. It�s no good if you look at the work, aren�t moved, then read the explanatory text and feel more intrigued by the conceptual underpinnings of the work rather than the finished piece itself. This art has no power.  Orozco�s pieces aren�t persuasive. They don�t demand my attention or evoke a physical response. Witty though much of his work may at first appear, to me it just isn�t interesting.

changes

This morning I found out that my sweet, bonkers cat, Seven, died.  It�s difficult to articulate without sounding over the top, but I loved that creature and it�s all rather distressing.

Seven

Even still, these things happen.  Without wanting to sound like a Hallmark card, I know it�s part of the cycle of things and perfectly natural, but it�s still terribly sad.  Rather curiously, I wrote most of this post last night and it�s all about change.

Here goes.

There�s something about the changing of the seasons, but particularly the transition from summer heat to autumnal chill that always brings on a bout of self-reflection, a stock take of the past year.  I think it�s because I�ve spent nearly every October of my life starting a new school year so this month, far more than January, always feels like the true beginning of the year, the time to make new goals and assess the progress of previous plans and resolutions.

So. Where am I this October?  For the first time in twenty-odd years I am not starting October as a student.  On Monday I submitted my thesis to the examinations office so now it's just a few months of waiting while the examiners scribble furiously in red pen throughout the margins and then, after that's done, the viva.  Post viva, I shall be Dr. Crystal Bennes and none the wiser for it.

The nicest thing about finishing my thesis is not that I have my life back, for I seem to be busier than ever, but rather that the feeling of work never ending has vanished. Sure, I still have lots to do, but there's no longer the relentless little fairy of academia sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear that I should be working whenever I'm doing anything that isn't working. I can tell you, it's absolutely liberating.

Other news, other changes: I'm moving. From Clerkenwell. To Hackney Wick. I've spent the better part of the last week and a half freaking out about this, but now I'm rather giddy. I like change. It excites me.  New environments spur new thinking and, though I love Clerkenwell, I think the stimulus provided by new people and a new part of London will more than make up for the loss of such a central location and such great restaurants.  Plus given Hackney Wick's proximity to the Olympic site, it's going to undergo an interesting metamorphosis over the next few years and being a part of that is bound to be interesting.  The only thing I told myself I really couldn't live without was a top-notch breakfasting spot within a ten-minute walk of chez moi.  Luckily, the brilliant and delicious Counter is exactly that.  Their breakfast is one of the best in London. Make the pilgrimage. You'll thank me.

My new place in Hackney Wick

From breakfast to snack food. Or so it would appear.  Ai Weiwei's new installation of 100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds has just opened in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern.  Let me waste no time: I don't like it. At all. Given that I tend to loathe most of the TM's blockbuster exhibitions, perhaps this isn't all that surprising, but I loved Miroslaw Balka's aircraft hangar of a blind-man's box and was expecting something equally sensational from Weiwei. 

More than that I was expecting something provocative, a statement piece, for lack of a better phrase.  Instead what I've been given is a work entirely without context desperately trying to carve out meaning via the artist�s reputation.  An oceanless beach of sunflower seeds does not a statement make.  No doubt the problem lies in the fact that Weiwei is so well known as an agent provocateur, an artist whose work so disturbed the smooth facade of the Chinese government that he was beaten by the police for investigating the student casualties of the Sichuan earthquake.  This is not the challenging, affront of a work one expects from such an individual, let alone artist.  It is a work with an imposed framework of meaning which supposedly enables the viewer to understand it, but only serves to distract from the fact that there is no significant meaning. 

Ai Weiwei's installation in the Tate Modern. photo by Loz Flowers

The sunflower seeds only work when one reads the accompanying text that explains each seed was individually hand painted by artisans in the workshops of Jingdezhen, where imperial porcelainware used to be made, workshops which have become increasingly commercialised.  Or that sunflower seeds were the snack-du-jour during the cultural revolution when other foodstuffs were scarce.  Conversely, I also don't want to accept the reductive viewpoint that I should enjoy the work as it is: something kind of fun to play in.  Perhaps this is unfair, but I expect more from an artist with Weiwei's reputation.  This could have, and should have, been an opportunity for both artist and institution - especially given that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee recently proved the threat of poor relations with China wasn't deterrent enough to award the Prize to a Chinese citizen - to create a truly provocative, forceful, and gripping piece of work.  100 million sunflower seeds is not challenging, nor beautiful, nor moving. It's disappointing. Now maybe if those seeds grew into 100 million sunflowers...

kingfisher

Even if I'm not tired of London, perhaps I'm tiring of not being tired with London. One can only preach the gospel for so long without becoming tiresome. Indeed. Nevertheless, it's lovely to be home. Thailand might be rocking, but at the moment, tis for all the wrong reasons.

Up first: Tuesday and la Newsom. Saw Joanna Newsom live for the first time on the first night of her two-night run at the Royal Festival Hall. I've listened to the new album start to finish twice today. Though I hadn't given it a proper listen before the gig, it hardly mattered. Such a beautiful woman. Beautiful voice. Beautiful harp. Beautiful everything. If you haven't got the new album, you really ought to, especially if you've always found her slightly-off putting. Personally, I loved Ys, but I gather that it's not to everyone's taste. With this new album, Have One On Me, she's moderated those medieval, bardiac impulses (to some extent a forced moderation - she had surgery on her vocal chords last year) and her voice is cleaner; those dramatic, vocal affectations are almost entirely absent. Though it flirts with the mainstream the new record is still bizarre, but bizarre with substance, not just bizarre in style. There's a strong narrative arc, though free of Ys's conceptual mythology: the new songs are firmly grounded in reality and all the more powerful for it. Even if the break-up narrative is one we're all overly familiar with, it's the mark of a master craftsman who can make the overly familiar novel and nostalgic all at once.

Wednesday: I went to the preview of Artangel's new project, Smother, developed over the last nine months with artist Sarah Cole and a bushel of young parents. To be honest, I found the whole experience completely mystifying which is rather mystifying in itself as Artangel produced Roger Hiorns's, Seizure, one of the best exhibitions I've ever seen in London. I think it's meant to be a loose, performance-based meditation on the problems/experience/anxieties of being a young parent, but all we saw was a rather wonderful, 65-degree wedge, Alice-in-Wonderland-style house and a few people wandering around, ostensibly 'doing' things: moving a mattress, screwing about with a stereo system, straining to reach a balloon floating on the ceiling. No idea what any of this had to do with the raising of problematic progeny, but then again, I was only in the space for 10 minutes or so: I kept feeling that if I stayed just a little bit longer, I might see something which would then make everything make sense. We could see a pair of feet lacing up ice skates downstairs and were certain that if we just waited a few more minutes we might get to see the lady skate around, but instead we were shepherded out. Rather disappointing, but perhaps worth a second look.

 
Smother by Kevin Dutton

Thursday I intended to witness the wonderful Simon Barraclough go all psycho poetic interpreting Hitchcock's Psycho, but instead I rather unhelpfully got the flu.  I slept from about 6pm on Thursday until 3pm on Friday. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to have the flu before, though. Just as I was ready to start googling symptoms of malaria I came home to find my flatmate on the couch sneezing into a box of man-size Kleenex. When I went to India, I got ALL the shots and took the malaria pills until I realised that a) they made me horrid sick and b) there weren't any mosquitoes in the Himalayas. Didn't even cross my mind that there might be mosquitoes on the beach in Thailand. I've only been an all-you-can-eat buffet once before, and that was strictly in the service of art, not for the pleasure of blood-sucking insects. Evil creatures. So when I went all feverish less than a week after my return from the 'land of smiles' I was cursing myself for negligence and praying to the manes not to have malaria. Thankfully, I was well enough by Friday evening and so headed to the Tate Modern for their ten-year celebrations.

Friday saw, No Soul for Sale, what the Tate Modern is calling the maniacally hodge-podge jumble-sale of a 'festival of independents' happening in the Turbine Hall. There were concerts (ticketed) happening as well, but we didn't have tickets for those and so had to find solace in the post-modern bouncehouse on the mezzanine level, which we happily discovered on our way out. The bouncehouse (hello, this is the Tate Modern and there's no way in hell a bouncy castle is going to be called a bouncy castle within such hallowed, institutionalised walls. obviously). To allow for full disclosure, we didn't really give the fair our complete attention. We sauntered in and immediately felt overwhelmed. There were people everywhere, the demarcation between the galleries/exhibition spaces was unclear and poorly defined, and the whole thing was just mostly incomprehensible. Some lady pointed us toward a miniature bouncy castle (yes, another one) and started reeling out some yarn about the recent discovery of the mini-castle (we were supposed to pretend it was 2050 or something) serving as evidence to justify the argument for the existence of domesticated cats (who were, you see, extinct in the future. but the future was now...). This kind of art makes me angry and rather depressed. Even more so when it's displayed in what's supposed to (hahahahahahaha) be the pre-eminent venue for the display of contemporary art in this country. This crap should not be sanctioned by The Big Boys. But even in the claustrophobic crush and disorienting disarray, I managed to find at least something that made me pause. Rapha�l Zarka had a lovely piece on the 220jours gallery stand. I think the premise of the 220jours stand was to see whether the remnants of previous works or exhibitions could themselves become works: interesting enough. Zarka, who is best known for his skateboarding series, showed a lovely series of posters, Catalogue Raisonn� des Rhombicubocta�dres, documenting all the rhombicuboctahedron used by the artists in previous works. Of course, I can't find an image anywhere, nor did I take one, so you'll just have to take my word for it.


good times in the bouncehouse

Pause. Brief interlude for dancing. Thank god for dancing.

Saturday I went to (gasp!) South London to visit my friend's gallery, Platform 1, which is sweetly located just off platform one at Wandsworth Common Station. Platform 1 is hosting an exhibition by Mobile Studio, a young London-based architectural practice. The exhibition is not really an exhibition so much as it is a public consultation: an opportunity for the attendee to become artist and offer a possible solution to an intriguing problem. The gist is basically this: in the 1950s Erno Goldfinger built a caretaker's cottage on the grounds of a Wandsworth school, the cottage was demolished illegally a few years ago, and the responsible developer was recently ordered to rebuild the cottage exactly according to the original footprint. Bit bonkers, right? So Mobile Studio have taken it upon themselves to question such an action and to involve the public in thinking of other ways the space might be put to better use or at the very least to question the decision making process. The public is encouraged to submit proposals for alternative plans for the space. Some local school children took up the challenge with gusto: one of the most amusing proposals was from a Cody, aged 15, who wanted to build a giant gold statue of a hand with the middle finger flipped up. A man after my own heart, really. In case you're curious, as I know you are, my proposal was for a museum of demolished/destroyed buildings.


Goldfinger's cottage...
 
Sunday, how do I love thee. Sundays are for sherry and speakers turned way up but also for work, of course. Thankfully this work entailed a meeting which involved Exmouth Market and brunch. With a friend, I'm organising a rather spectacular event for the London Festival of Architecture. Things are starting to come together and it's all unbearably exciting. I won't say much for now, but it's all going to kick off in Clerkenwell the first weekend of July. As always, stay tuned...

(not so)lonely hearts club

Friday:

After the not-so-goodness that was Thursday, me and The Kitten decided to take matters into our own hands. When I was in my first year at Uni, I took a creative writing course. In that course, I wrote a story about two girls who sneak back stage at a rock concert by tricking the security guard. It was a shit story, but it was probably better than if I tried to write up what actually happened on Friday. The Kitten suggested we head to the Fanfarlo gig even though it was sold out, so after a sneaky pit stop at the Three Kings along to ULU we went. No scalpers were in sight so we sneakily joined the guest list queue and rattled off a few possible possibilities for blagging our way in. The people in front of us had tickets but they still seemed to be arguing about being on the guest list - we never quite figured out what was going down. They left in a huff after giving their tickets back to the guest-list lady. We decided that honesty was the best policy and so looked at the lady with the list as if we were in desperate need of some entertainment - which we were - and when she asked us if we were on the guest list, we said no and that we didn't have tickets and that we knew it was sold out, but what were those tickets the people in front of us had just given back and could we, like, maybe prettypleasewithacherryontop have them. Amazingly, the lovely lady gave us the tickets and we scampered downstairs like two girls who just won the lottery! The gig was great: lovely band - a sort of Beirut-lite - lovely vibe, lovely night.

Saturday:

After my usual Saturday morning ritual of the Ambassador + FT, I thought I'd head to the Tate Modern. I don't know why I keep going back to the Tate Modern. I'm beginning to think I'm a glutton for artistic punishment. The last show I saw at the Tate that I rated as a few degrees warmer than acceptable was the Cildo Meireles show last January. Thank god for the Level 2 gallery, though, as this seems to be the only place open to interesting contemporary work by people who are still alive. The Jill Magid show last fall was excellent and Michael Rakowitz' show, The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own, was the only thing that saved this visit from total irrelevance.

I suppose I shouldn't be so harsh. Everyone's experience of art is different and one of our lovely interns went to visit the exhibition when it first opened and was totally taken with the multi-disciplinary van Doesburg. Having said that, you're reading my blog so you probably don't care what our lovely intern thought...and I thought the exhibition was tedious and boring. If you're into Mondrian and Kandinsky, chances are you'll like van Doesburg, but I don't like Kandinsky and I'm not very into Mondrian and I certainly won't invest in an art movement that reduces all of life's complexities down to straight lines and primary colours.

But because I don't want anyone to accuse me of being an art nazi, I'll tell you what you should do. Skip the van Doesburg on level 5 and head straight to the level 2 gallery, which most people seem to skip for some reason even though it's free!! As my friends will attest, I typically hate anything to do with science fiction, but Rakowitz' combination of Star Wars and Saddam Hussein was provocative, hilarious, and strangely insightful. I'm not really a Star Wards fan, but I laughed out loud when I turned the corner into the last room - the set up and delivery of the central premise of the exhibition is absolutely delightful, yet so other and so creepy. Because I study ancient Rome and do a lot of reception, I always come across the comparison of Mussolini and imperial Rome, but to find that Hussein used the helmet of Darth Vadar as a model for paramilitary helmets is quite something else altogether. All the findings are presented by Rakowitz as half social history/half art and it all feels like peering through some kind of window into another world. Really wonderful stuff.

Sunday:

Part one - super hungover brunch (eggs florentine on brioche with gallons of earl grey tea) at what used to be the Patisserie Valerie on Brompton Road, but which is now something else even though it looks exactly like the old Valerie and seems to offer the exact same menu. Weird.

Part two - post brunch, The Designer and I headed to the V&A for our anti-Valentine's Day digital extravaganza to check out the Decode exhibition. Apparently most of the child-bearing population of London had the same idea and the place was rammed full of kids. Interactive exhibitions are a lot less fun when they're full of children. You have to wait politely for the midget drunks to finish so you can have some fun too, but the thing about midget drunks is that they have no conception of sharing and never realise that someone else would like to play too. And you can't really say anything to the kid like - dude, you've played long enough, piss off - as the parents look at you like you're a child molester.

Having said that, we still managed to have a laugh and we got to play with all the toys in the end. I think my favourite of all the displays was a bed of electronic reeds - you know, like reeds that grown on the sides of river banks - they had light and noise sensors in them so when you brushed the reeds with your hands or walked through them, they lit up and sang. There's also an interactive version of Radiohead's House of Cards video - you can use your fingers on the screen to move Thom Yorke's head all over the place.

Probably the most fun we had all afternoon was playing with a video camera. There's a screen set up that's divided into 25 smaller screens. In front of the screen is a monitor and a camera. You stand in front of the camera, push one of the squares on the monitor which then activates the camera which records a one-second video clip. The video clip is then speeded up and repeated endlessly in its section of the screen. I don't know if it was because we were hungover or if there's something about being in front of a camera that brings out the bonehead in people, but I could have played with that thing all day. Playing is the best! I think I laughed more yesterday than I have in ages. Though that may have also had something to do with the woman outside the V&A who looked at me like I was a crack whore when I said something to The Designer about how much I missed being able to open the door wearing nothing but a trench coat and saying, 'take me now!' Your lady turned around and gave me the death stare at which point my friend and I dissolved into hysterics.

Good weekend. Good friends. Good times.

i can burn your face

'To burn a face' is a slang expression used among spies

for the threat to expose another agent's identity.

It's funny how spectators of art so often take 'truth' for granted. If someone whacks a shark in a box of formaldehyde and says it's art, we believe that not only is it a real shark in real formaldehyde, but also that it's real art, provided it's in a gallery setting of course. If an artist says that the ashes in a pile in the corner of the gallery resulted from a wind shelter they exploded with a hand grenade, we believe that as well. It wasn't until I went to check out Jill Magid's show at the Tate Modern that I realised how much we were willing to accept at face value.

Though Jill Magid's exhibition at the Tate Modern is in the little gallery on level 2 and hasn't been promoted well or reviewed much, it's the most interesting exhibition I've seen in the TM since Cy Twombly's exhibition in 2008. As a viewer, I'm very intrigued by the idea of Magid's work, her commission with the AIVD - the Dutch Intelligence and Security Agency, the country's secret service - and the restrictions placed on the artist about showing the work, but the very nature of the work itself made me surprisingly sceptical.

It's a very small show, but it took less than 5 minutes of wandering around before I begin to wonder whether I was being had. Was this exhibition a true reflection of the artist's actual experience or was it simply that a very clever individual had dreampt up a fantastic conceptual framework which resulted in some pretty words scrawled in neon light. I've since done a bit of research and it seems that Magid did have a commission with the AIVD and worked with them from 2005 to 2008. Under regulations - which similarly exist in parts of the UK - stipulating that new buildings must provide an element which engages with the arts, usually a public sculpture, she won the commission. It sounds like an initially forward thinking AIVD hired Magid to find the 'human face' of the organisation, only they got a bit more than they bargained for. She carried out her commission by meeting privately with a number of agents and collecting personal data about them and their experiences working as agents in the secret service.

In fact, Magid herself requested to be vetted by the agency and was eventually granted security clearance. Her exhibition speaks strongly of her own desire to be part of 'the secret' and to act as an agent herself. Though no matter how close she got and what kind of access she received, what happened next only demonstrates how clear the divide is between 'us' and 'them'. In 2008, Magid was set to show the results of her commission at a gallery in the Hague, though the day before its opening, a group of AIVD agents showed up (sounds more like a film than real life!) to vet the work. Magid also gave the agents a copy of the manuscript of her novel - which she wrote in lieu of a report about the experience - which they later returned in a heavily edited form.

AIVD edited page from Magid's novel

When Magid complained to the AIVD that the censored manuscript was no longer publishable, they brilliantly suggested that she show the manuscript in a one-time only exhibition, after which it would become the property of the Dutch government and not be published. What else do you expect when you undertake a commission for a secret service agency. Having said that, I think Magid, and the exhibition side-step the problematic issues surrounding permissions and secrecy beautifully and imaginatively. As Magid was obviously not allowed to reproduce photographic images of the agents, she had to think of another way to visually represent them. One of the ways she did so was to visualise language as a series of neon signs - these are words or phrases the agents said during their interviews - which are then written in neon in her own handwriting.

Exploring the negative imapact of a highly intrusive surveilance society is one of the most overused tropes in contemporary art - it's usually presented in a screechy, obvious, in-your-face manner. Magid's work makes the same statement but uses an entirely different pack of cards: the message is so subtle and refined - mixed with an unexpected longing to be on the other side - that it takes until long after you've departed the exhibition to figure out what the real message is all about.

PS While you're at the Tate, make sure to check out the Miroslaw Balka's work in the turbine hall. It's great fun!

Miroslaw Balka;s 'How It Is' at Tate Modern (image from London Smoke blog)

Haunch of Venison III

Haunch of Venison makes me happy. Obviously, I love the way it sounds when you say, 'I'm off to Haunch of Venison', but mostly I love it because it's magnificently inspiring. HOV is doing what the Tate Modern should be doing had they more curatorial gumption: showcasing works by innovative and exciting contemporary artists. I'm pretty clued up when it comes to contemporary art, but every time I go to a new show at HOV, I'm always surprised by work from an artist I've never heard of before.

I went to the private view tonight for the new Thomas Heatherwick Extrusions exhibition which opens just in time for the London Design Festival. Rather appropriate, as (though I haven't quite made up my mind) I'm pretty sure these pieces are process over practice. Not that I'm in any position to gripe, because I'm absolutely fascinated by process, technique, form - all those behind the scenes elements tend only to heighten one's appreciation of the final product - I love a back story. But this only works if the process is merely a contributing factor to the finished product - anything that rests on the laurels of process must be, by its very nature, flawed. So the fact that you can't even sit on Heatherwick's benches means there's something not quite right about them, but does explain why they're in the HOV: these are not benches, they're art. To be fair, as art they're beautiful and immeasurably clever pieces of sculpture, but as benches, frankly they're terrible.

In any event, all was not lost as I stumbled upon something of much more interest on the ground floor: beautiful light sculptures from the early 1970s by the American artist Dan Flavin. This just goes to prove my point. Dan Flavin is one of those artists that you (meaning me, of course) probably should know, but don't. That's what I love about HOV. Everyone knows too much about Picasso, Duchamps, Dali, but even more than too much about Gilbert & George, Emin and Hirst. Most people who rock up to the Tate Modern on the weekend have never heard of Flavin or Coventry or Ghenie - all artists recently shown at HOV. I say this all the time, but it should be the role of an institution like the Tate Modern to expose people to under represented work by significant artists. If the Tate Modern went up in flames tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it for a second - as long as HOV continues programming consistently outstanding exhibitions, I'll look to it for inspirational and innovative thinking in contemporary art.