... Eugenie is it? Well, not much of a surprise after my anonymous correspondent posted the link to the gallery pictures last week but still a bit of a mystery, for me at least, as to how she managed to win. Actually though, there was a larger mystery to be solved in this week's final School of Saatchi. The mystery of the missing Ben. He was seen early on cutting up bits of cardboard for his collage but then disappeared from the screen completely until the final judging. All the others were seen preparing their works for the exhibition where the judging would take place but Ben was noticeable only by his absence. One of the two works he was exhibiting wasn't even mentioned until the judges showed up, being glimpsed only briefly in the background as the camera panned around.
At the end of the program I was left with the idea, which I may check out by watching it again, that the order of elimination corresponded exactly to the amount of screen time the artists received. So the invisible Ben went out first. His main piece had been the aforementioned collage in which he had meticulously slotted together tiny pieces of cut up cardboard representing his journey through the ten week process of the competition.
Suki and Samuel followed him out of the running. Suki's piece had been a white wooden tower that you entered via a ladder and in which you could hear a recording of a buzzing insect. Samuel had been forced to a rethink on safety grounds when his original concept of a Van der Graaf Generator with a wig was vetoed by the gallery and Charles Saatchi. He re-presented it as a performance piece, running for only a few minutes and surrounded by a safety cage.
My favourite, Saad, was the next to go. His works were a recreation of a makeshift asian sun-shade and a couple of elaborately constructed discs with some grafitti on them. They were OK but not as interesting as any of his previous pieces.
That left Matt - who had presented a wooden caravan with a strange narrative interior about a sad caravan dwelling prophet called Professor T. Elphas - and, of course, Eugenie.
As the winner, Eugenie deserves dwelling on a little more. She presented two pieces. One was a foam grappling hook on a high shelf with a rope hanging from it. The other, which was the piece that won it for her, was a length of fallen tree impaled on the bars of blue fence. It was certainly striking but there seemed to be an element of falsity about the whole process. Her works in the series have included a whistle hanging from a bathroom towel rail, a tassel on a wire and the aforementioned foam grappling hook. These are a little too close to being the work of a confidence trickster for comfort. The tree on the fence was interesting, the most interesting piece in this exhibition, but can she really take any credit for it? She had spotted it as she walked along a street and got permission from the property owners to cut down the fence and remount it in the gallery. I suppose that Tracey Emin had a point when she said that there was art in realising that it was an artistic object and in the cheek required to persuade the owners to give it up but I remain unconvinced.
All in all this last program was a bit of a disappointment with none of the concepts showing the imagination of previous episodes and none of the executions being very remarkable. Still all the contestants have shown flashes of greatness through the series and I shall look forward to seeing them in the future.
And I hope we get a few more programs like this.
At the end of the program I was left with the idea, which I may check out by watching it again, that the order of elimination corresponded exactly to the amount of screen time the artists received. So the invisible Ben went out first. His main piece had been the aforementioned collage in which he had meticulously slotted together tiny pieces of cut up cardboard representing his journey through the ten week process of the competition.
Suki and Samuel followed him out of the running. Suki's piece had been a white wooden tower that you entered via a ladder and in which you could hear a recording of a buzzing insect. Samuel had been forced to a rethink on safety grounds when his original concept of a Van der Graaf Generator with a wig was vetoed by the gallery and Charles Saatchi. He re-presented it as a performance piece, running for only a few minutes and surrounded by a safety cage.
My favourite, Saad, was the next to go. His works were a recreation of a makeshift asian sun-shade and a couple of elaborately constructed discs with some grafitti on them. They were OK but not as interesting as any of his previous pieces.
That left Matt - who had presented a wooden caravan with a strange narrative interior about a sad caravan dwelling prophet called Professor T. Elphas - and, of course, Eugenie.
As the winner, Eugenie deserves dwelling on a little more. She presented two pieces. One was a foam grappling hook on a high shelf with a rope hanging from it. The other, which was the piece that won it for her, was a length of fallen tree impaled on the bars of blue fence. It was certainly striking but there seemed to be an element of falsity about the whole process. Her works in the series have included a whistle hanging from a bathroom towel rail, a tassel on a wire and the aforementioned foam grappling hook. These are a little too close to being the work of a confidence trickster for comfort. The tree on the fence was interesting, the most interesting piece in this exhibition, but can she really take any credit for it? She had spotted it as she walked along a street and got permission from the property owners to cut down the fence and remount it in the gallery. I suppose that Tracey Emin had a point when she said that there was art in realising that it was an artistic object and in the cheek required to persuade the owners to give it up but I remain unconvinced.
All in all this last program was a bit of a disappointment with none of the concepts showing the imagination of previous episodes and none of the executions being very remarkable. Still all the contestants have shown flashes of greatness through the series and I shall look forward to seeing them in the future.
And I hope we get a few more programs like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment