An artist who has said of himself, "I have a bad record with destroying things," has won this year's Turner prize.
Simon Starling is no provocateur. Nor was he a shock winner -- the bookies made him the even-money favorite. But none the less, it will come as no surprise to those who regard the Turner prize with disdain that the softly spoken, slightly geekish, rather skeletal figure of Starling has won £25,000 (US$43,000) for dismantling and assembling a wooden shed.
Starling, who was born in 1967, found it on the banks of the Rhine, took it apart, made parts of it into a boat, and used the vessel to carry the remaining parts of it downriver to Basle. It was then reassembled as a shed in a Swiss museum.
PHOTO: AP
The display of his work at the Turner prize exhibition at Tate Britain in London also includes a makeshift motorized bicycle, which Starling used to ride across the Tabernas desert in southern Spain.
It was powered by hydrogen in lightweight canisters that reacted with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce water as a byproduct. The artist used that in turn to paint a simple watercolor of a cactus he found en route. The watercolor is installed alongside the oversize, makeshift bike.
Starling calls his work a "physical manifestation of a thought process." According to Tate curator Rachel Tant. "He's interested in the creation of objects; he is a researcher, traveler, narrator. He looks at how things got to be the way they are and reasserts a human connection between processes we take for granted."
The prize was awarded on Monday by UK arts minister David Lammy, at a ceremony which one prominent artist referred to as a "school dinner for the British artworld." Lammy said of the prize: "Its true genius is that for a couple of days every year, everyone gets to be an expert, no matter what they think about art."
Traditionalists will be disappointed that the only painter (and, as it happens, the only woman) on the shortlist was denied the top prize. London-based Gillian Carnegie, an early bookies' favorite, apparently paints in an academic style, producing landscapes and portraits. But her works, though they look at first comfortingly old- fashioned, are often disturbing on second view.
Jim Lambie was the artist who many artworld insiders favored to win -- though one distinguished sculptor has dismissed him as a "glorified interior decorator." Whereas last year's Turner prize winner, Jeremy Deller, infuriated some by announcing that he could neither paint nor draw, Lambie has drawn criticism for saying he loved drawing and painting as an art student, but now prefers to stick vinyl tape on floors and make oversize versions of kitsch ornaments.
A gentle, banal piano melody accompanies the installation by Darren Almond, which, with its film of his grandmother watching the dancing in the ballroom at Blackpool and film of a gently bubbling fountain provide, is according to Tant, "a space where everybody can tap into their own memories."
Starling's work is an enjoyable, nomadic, shaggy-dog conceptualism, the trace of a very peculiar way of negotiating the world; but one which, in terms of contemporary art, is also an example of perfect product placement.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,