Contemporary artists always saying they want to get you to ‘ look at things in a different way’

Never a bad thing  if only to get you to appreciate how right you were to see them the way you did before.  Literal and prosaic it may be but what better than a conceptual installation art exhibit entitled  ‘ Empty Space With Nothing In It ‘ to inspire at least a sense of mystery.  It takes people of vision to realise that abstract concepts like ‘The Rape of the Environment’ can be expressed in a stack of interlocking ironing boards. It’s reassuring : a civilisation in which an artist is free to bubblewrap the Andes can’t be all bad. It’s why governments subsidise the arts – to be sure of having things around the place against which what they’re doing seems intelligible . Ultimately it is effect which artists strive for – to disturb or unsettle perhaps – and anyone who has spent an afternoon looking at a giant Rubic Cube made of crushed cars or walking a cobbled pathway of old organ-stops is bound to  come out looking at normality differently , if only with new-found relief. Sometimes they are out to achieve the ‘ the feel-good factor’ , whereby you can leave an exhibition thanking your lucky starts that Picasso was never your physiotherapist . 

(Basil Doddring , Towcester) - QQ***