Today, I got myself ready in preparation to hate the John Moores painting Prize : http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/jm2012/
It opened with the Biennial, back in September, but because there was so much on then – the Biennial, The Independents and my own exhibitions ( All FOUR of them!) I never got round to seeing it. As the months progressed, I saw various reviews ( not all favourable) and I just sort of never got round to going.
Then today came, it was my day off, the sun was shining and I didn’t really have a list of things to do. It was also the very last day of the exhibition.
So I went.
What a surprise. Having gone to every John Moores since as far as I can remember, I expected the usual mix of large abstracts or figurative… the usual ‘large’ but safe . The usual names…… the case of who you know, not what you can do. Sigh….
I didn’t expect so many works to totally break the tradition and move away from works on canvas. That was pretty new. I liked Laura Keeble’s painting on a crushed coke can, Bernat Daviu’s painted overalls, didn’t like Liz Elton’s screwed up plastic sheet – but did like the fact that it was in there! I went round twice and got annoyed with myself for not having any paper in my bag to take notes. I found an old bus ticket and scribbled down some names (see above!) …and wished I’d made the effort to come sooner.
On the way home, I tweeted that I’d been to see the exhibition and really enjoyed it. @JohnMoores2012 tweeted back ‘ look forward to getting your JM2014 entry! You can submit anything painted from now onwards’
Anything? Ooh – I am tempted ( even though it means breaking my rule of not paying entry fees! )
