Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I had a dream. I dreamed we went to Kent. I dreamed we stayed at a hotel in Canterbury, and it was a good dream. I dreamed we had a good weekend.
In my dream we had a lovely meal in a French restaurant. There was a choice of French restaurants, and we had to decide which one to go to. We had a good meal. We wandered round shops that are commonplace in Kent and most other parts of the country. Debenhams. Next. Fatface. Lakeland.
We were unsettled in the best way at the end
In my dream we found a small and very new cinema. We sat in a double seat and took our drinks in. We watched 45 Years, a new English film with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtney. We watched it entranced, and were unsettled in the best way at the end. We talked about it a lot over the weekend, and we’re still mentioning it. It’s not on here though. I checked.
We went to Margate – actually the reason for the trip. They’ve built an art gallery there, right by the sea, with long windows over the Thames Estuary. You can see the beautiful off-shore wind turbines out there, the sails majestically turning in the wind. Margate used to be a huge attraction, catering for Londoners, a bit like a southern Blackpool on the Kent coast.
A very sore eye sticking up out of the middle of the town’s face
There’s a railway line that terminates there. Good thing, really, because there’s nowhere else you can go, apart from the North Sea. Margate’s one of those towns that’s full of B&Bs and amusement arcades. There’s a large purpose-built old-fashioned entertainment centre called Dreamland, that’s been closed for years and looks like a very sore eye sticking up out of the middle of the town’s face for all to see.
There’s also a single huge concrete tower-block of flats that dominates everything around for miles. A bit like Margate’s sister-town on the north shore of the Thames estuary, Southend, with its own single monolith, occupied when I was there many years ago by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, bless them.
Hope has remained alive
The thing about Margate is not that it’s been run-down and hopelessly falling into disrepair and despair for years, since fickle holiday-makers started deserting its charms for those available on Mediterranean beaches. The story here is that hope has remained alive. They campaigned for years, and finally were granted the money to build the Turner Contemporary, right on the seafront, in honour of the great English painter, who used to visit and paint there.
The building itself is a series of pointed shapes, very solid and undecorated. Its walls are plain and monumental, and it’s surrounded by a large space, mostly concrete, and quite windy sometimes. Inside there’s also a lot of concrete, and it’s full of large spaces that are ideal for exhibitions.
It’s a charity, and it’s free to enter
There’s a small gift shop, and an excellent café, with lots of glass so you can see the North Kent coastline tapering off in the distance. It’s a charity, and it’s free to enter, and it holds great exhibitions. We wanted to get to the Grayson Perry exhibition before it closed, and we slipped in under the door last weekend.
Not everybody likes Grayson. He can be very in-your-face, and sometimes the detail in his work can be very challenging, but he has a unique role out there, and he’s a superb artist. He started his artistic life as a potter in the 1980s, which was a deeply uncool thing to do, but he soon gained a reputation for the size and beauty and unexpected decoration of his pots. So much so that he won the prestigious Turner Prize a few years ago.
He wants to explore who he is, and who we are
Turning up dressed as a caricature of a small girl in a party dress did nothing to hurt his reputation either. Grayson is not afraid to expose his own inner life in his art and his appearance, and some of it in his pots is quite disturbing, embedded and entwined with images of kitch normality. He wants to explore who he is, and who we are, living in this society at this time. He tries to get to the essence of his subject, whether it be class, or taste, or Englishness. And he approaches it in an inclusive and humorous way, and like a commentator, as Chaucer did in his own time, with the Canterbury Tales.
At the same time, his work is all about the skills and complexities of the craft, as well as an attempt to understand the differences and similarities between so-called Craft and so-called Art. We watched a video that was a time-lapsed sequence of photos of a pot being created from scratch, taken from a point above Grayson’s workbench.
Almost my favourite part of the exhibition
It shows him thinking, and searching through books, and slowly building up a large pot on a turntable, then shaping it and glazing it and adding layers of pictures and texture and colour in an ever-more complicated way. This was almost my favourite part of the exhibition, especially since I was able to study the pot itself in the next room.
Now established, Grayson seems to proceed with an idea, exploring it and becoming inspired to turn it into art whilst having it filmed for television. Whilst doing this, he will embrace new technology and risk everything falling apart in a very public way. This hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility is always there.
That’s heroic. And it’s beautiful
Some of his enormous tapestries are in the exhibition. He draws large complex pictures on a touch-screen PCV in great detail and vibrant colour, and then the file is sent to a company in Belgium, who have a huge tapestry-making machine, which recreates his picture into a vast tapestry that hangs on the gallery wall. The brochure says that one of these is 300cm by 1500cm. I had to work that out. It’s about 50 feet long and 10 feet high. That’s heroic. And it’s beautiful.
It turns out that the work put in to build the Turner Contemporary is beginning to pay off. Margate has a new and iconic structure. There’s a run-down area of shops and workshops that’s attracting artists and galleries and jewellers and cafes. Even Dreamland is being refurbished and parts of it are starting to be reopened to the public.
To become good again at what it has always done well
Our weekend was splendid. It wasn’t only about shopping and eating, which is fine by me already, but it turned out to be remarkably civilized and cultural. But the part I most like is that Kent is making efforts to revitalize itself, taking risks and making decisions to become good again at what it has always done well. It feels like a place that’s starting to believe in itself again. A place that’s looking forward to its future.
I’d like to feel that way about our island.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
Image: Visit Thanet under CC BY 2.0
Image: Ashley Dace under CC BY 2.0
Image: dgeezer under CC BY 2.0
Image: Amano1 under CC BY 2.0
Image: suarts under CC BY 2.0
Image: westher under CC BY 2.0
Image: Oast House Archive under CC BY 2.0
