Six weeks of Turner Prize fun and games start tomorrow at the Baltic gallery, and reach a climax with the award ceremony on 5 December
There's just a day to go until the start of Gateshead's Big Six Weeks. Apart from the kittiwakes, whose famous roosts along the Tyne are deserted while the birds forage far out at sea, everyone is heading for the Baltic art gallery.
The former flour mill, one of the Big Four art successes which have made Gateshead a byword for imagination (the others are the Angel of the North, the Sage concert hall and the Millennium 'winking' bridge), is the venue for this year's Turner Prize.
Batty, bold or 'conceptual bullshit' in the words of former New Labour culture minister Kim Howells, the award has come out of London for only the second time. The exhibition which starts on Friday, 21 October, is also the first to be held off the sacred premises of the Tate; the debut regional ceremony in 2007 was at Tate Liverpool.
Everyone will have great fun gasping at the four finalists before the £25,000 prize, with £5000 for each runner-up, is awarded on 5 December. The Baltic describes them pithily and soberly thus:
KARLA BLACK who has an innovative approach to sculpture and makes substantial works made in otherwise temporary spaces and materials.
MARTIN BOYCE who holds the viewer with atmospheric sculptural installations, combining references to design history and text, marked by a subtle attention to detail.
HILARY LLOYD who combines still and moving images, sound and the three dimensional forms of AV playback equipment to portray the urban environment.
GEORGE SHAW whose paintings, with their deeply personal juxtaposition of subject matter and material, lie intriguingly on the edge of tradition.
Mmmm. You can read much more about them, the ceremony and the Baltic here.
Tyneside meanwhile is having a modest spell of Turnermania, with children at Chillingham Road primary school organising a Turner Prize Cafe and voting on their own winner (although the result, like the real one, remains under wraps for now).
The local Evening Chronicle has also joined in the fun, recalling past excitements at Turner award ceremonies with more than a hint that a bit of fun tonight wouldn't go amiss:
In 1998 winner Chris Ofili's elephant dung paintings were a gift to headline writers and cartoonists. But the reaction was nothing compared with shortlisted Tracey Emin's My Bed exhibit the following year, which featured her own unmade and rather grubby bed.
When Martin Creed won in 2001 for The Lights Going On and Off, featuring a room with the lights flashing on and off, another artist threw eggs at it in protest.
And the Sunderland Echo reports how children across the north east can enter their own version of the prize, by designing a poster for the event – drawing on the railway posters of Sir Norman Wilkinson, who carried out dazzle camouflage experiments on warships in the Tyne shipyards.
The north of England has every reason to expect further visits from leading contemporary artists and the London art critics; the prize organisers have decided to hold the award outside the capital every other year.
I'd guess that the Hepworth Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park will do the business within the next decade. Roll on the day.