Slag

That's more like it

There's not much about being Welsh that I hate but, by fuck, if I go to one more local art show and see one more painting of a pit head, deep seam, slag heap or terraced row I'll be shoving lumps of anthracite up the nearest artist I can find.
Christ, you'd think that Welsh artists had been kept in some sort of coal-based captivity, that they'd never seen a blue sky, a funfair, a book or a live chicken, such is their obsession with the region's history of the coal industry. 
Just days ago I went to the Rhondda Heritage Park to see the latest art show - it's a venue for all sorts of art, not just heritage-drenched nostalgia - and it was so achingly predictable that I would have witnessed more imaginative visuals in a lift shaft. It's not that execution was fat-handed but that none of the artists had raised their eyes or imaginations above the usual, parochial, stereotypical images of South frigging Wales.
What is going on with these people? It's not that there's a problem with them enjoying the rich history of the area, just that aren't they bored to fuck with depicting it? I mean, what's wrong with attempting to create images of a more modern Wales, even if that means recreating girls chucking up on a Saturday night, blokes scoring in alleyways, and the endless sprouting of call centres. 
Perhaps these images just aren't as giddily romantic as that of tin baths and sooty fathers. Yet they're one hell of a lot more honest and I'd be chuffed to shit to see one in a local art show even if it were to replace just one more lithograph or collage of a fucking dram.
So, as someone who has been known to knock out the odd portrait herself, I'm going to start painting pissed women stumbling through Merthyr Tydfil and dogs shitting on the Taff Trail. It won't be pretty but it will be bang up to date and that's more than you could say for Dai Jones' Slag Heap at Sunset No 1. Oh and No 2. And No 3.... 

Art Attack

I just like blue, innit

You know what makes me ever so slightly nuts about modern art? Not the art itself, no. In fact the art itself I love.What makes me want to run through a gallery with a flame thrower, though, is the little explanations that accompany said pieces of art. Jesus, what stunning displays of complete and utter bilge.

In fact, I reckon that these little plaques which have been adorned with 200 words of festering bollocks are works of art in themselves. How else could you explain the levels of creativity employed to make a canvas of splodges appear to be the work of the giddying extremes of humanity?

This is partly down to the fact that I have my own mind. Look, if a lawn mower strewn with condoms and bunting is your contribution to the world of art, fine. Just don’t tell me what to fucking think about it, OK?

Yet my loathing is more down to the irrepressible ponciness of said descriptions. No one ever accompanies their work with a plaque that simply says “I just like pink, that’s all” or “It’s something I knocked up while I was watching Corrie.” Oh fuck, no. I get the feeling that anything less than three paragraphs of indecipherable toss and a reference to an abusive past gets you chucked out of the club.

In fact, one way to pass the time while surrounded by modern art, however much you love the stuff, is to play bullshit bingo. Just look out for the following words:

• Juxtaposed
• Vagina
• Reference
• Idealised
• Coherence
• Juxtaposed
• Dialogue
• Penis
• Organic
• Femininity
• Encapsulation
• Juxtaposed

And that lot is just to accompany the building works that are currently going on in the reception area.

I once had to be removed from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in LA after reading 500 words about one tiny pencil mark on a blank wall. Then there was that moment in Madrid when a white canvas was said to represent my very own ovaries. And in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, after learning how a pile of bricks and drainpipes represented the journey of feminism, I filled an entire page of its guestbook with my own lengthy explanations. I do believe that had my fellow visitors been playing bullshit bingo they would have then spotted the words:

• Cobblers
• Ponce-buckets
• Conceited
• Stool-water
• Spleen
• Bastards
• Don’t
• Sausages

So spare me the convoluted imaginings of exactly why a one dollar note has been pinned to the wall, will you? And don’t bother with the deep and meaningfuls over an empty milkbottle that’s been balanced on a shoe. You’ll get more admiration from me if you put your wittering to one side and just admit that you think it looks kinda cool. Oh go on. It’s called showing originality, isn’t it?