Exhibit

Well, a whole day to take in stuff before meeting up with F&H.
So, wisely prioritising said stuff, first up, the Turner shortlist at Tate Britain. I believe that not everyone is impressed that all four are video installations, and fairly political at that. Forensic Architecture must win, but I guess it shouldn’t even be in the running, cos it’s not art...?
Then on to the Hayward to see Space Shifters and a brilliant piece by Alicja Kwade and finally (via a pie stop) to the Tate Modern to see Clocks. That’s phenomenal. Phe-nom-e-nal.
So, a beer in a trendy place in WH with H, then over to Tufnell Park to an Ethiopian Restaurant where we met up with F. I can declare that spicy cottage cheese gets my vote. I may see if I can squeeze it into my repertoire.

And some caustic reviews of that Turner prize

If the future of art is going to be all about watching videos in darkened rooms, God help us.

Then you pop into each artist’s darkened booth to be taught your lessons in gender politics, identity, alienation, colonial violence. As an aid to punishment, only half of the booths have any seating.

before the narration – readings from her diaries and various queer books – chronicles her coming out in rural Scotland. The whole exercise – made possible by Creative Scotland – is dull and effortlessly self-indulgent in the extreme.

His other work follows a day in the life of a man living in an abandoned airport. It takes three hours to watch all of this, so brace yourself. It’s not all that absorbing, and ends up feeling like a sub-Netflix political documentary that’s neither that interesting nor particularly affecting.

Shot on an iPhone, filled with scenes of home life, the countryside, rumbling seas and Neolithic stones, it’s a gentle, sad meditation on identity, gender and history. If I was being cruel I’d say it was a bit Wes Anderson-goes-to-Goldsmiths, but it’s lovely in lots of ways, though quite dull in others.

As an exhibition, this is absolutely awful. The opening dentist’s waiting room followed by literally hours of art in the same medium leaves you wishing you’d had root canal instead. It’s over-long, slow and unvaried. It's a poor experience. But it’s not really an exhibition. It’s a statement about where contemporary art is right now, and that’s way more interesting. These are troubled times, politically and socially, and that’s screamed out loudly and clearly across every work here. Some of it is bollocks, some of it isn’t. That’s life, and that’s the Turner Prize. My money’s on Forensic Architecture.

the cheerless words of Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, they tackle "some of today’s most important issues, from queer identity, human rights abuses and police brutality to post-colonial migration and the legacy of liberation movements". That might well not be what you want art to do, but forewarned is forearmed.