The New Turner Contemporary Art Galley Opened April 2011 in Margate, UK

Written by Jonathan Glancey Wednesday, 20 April 2011 23:52

London (The Guardian).- "The sun is God." These are said to be the last words Joseph Mallord William Turner spoke from his London deathbed as the light streamed through his window. Not quite true: what the artist actually said, to his doctor, was "Go downstairs and get yourself a glass of sherry." The more famous phrase was an invention of Turner's friend, John Ruskin, the critic who made the artist a kind of demigod, championing his every brushstroke. Turner Contemporary, a brand-new public art gallery that opened on the seafront at Margate on April 16th 2011, glories in sunlight. It rises from the site of the lodging house where the artist enjoyed the ample favours of its landlady, Sophia Booth. It was from this north Kent beach, where the North Sea wrestles with the Thames Estuary, that Turner immortalised in oils and watercolours the sunlight and seascapes that would make him Britain's greatest painter.

The Turner Contemporary project itself began back in 2001. Under the directorship of Victoria Pomery, the arts organisation has been putting on exhibitions and events in a variety of local buildings; to date, more than 690,000 people have visited Turner Contemporary shows or taken part in workshops and courses in Margate, a town of high unemployment and otherwise limited opportunities for artists. As well as providing a place where art can be seen, the building has been built to give artists a space to work with local people. Its original design, by Norwegian architects Snøhetta and Britain's Stephen Spence, would have been situated right at the end of the town's harbour mouth. Intended to open in 2007, it would have cost around £55m and been prey to the forces of nature that make for memorable paintings, but are no friend to architecture. "It was a very romantic proposition," says architect David Chipperfield who designed its replacement after a consultation process involving 8,000 locals. "I liked the idea very much, but only on paper.



The reality here is a seafront that can be very tough and unforgiving, and any building facing it has to be extremely robust." What Chipperfield has designed is further inland, a bold yet simple gallery that has cost £17.5m. From a distance it appears to be a sequence of industrial-era boat sheds, but close up reveals itself as an interconnected set of giant artists' studios sheathed in walls of thick translucent glass. During the course of a day they capture, reflect and refract the many moods of the sun and sea. The building changes colour, acting as an architectural canvas on which the light that inspired Turner can play.

"It's very fortunate", says Chipperfield, "that the gallery faces due north, as, of course does Margate, which is not often the case of holiday resorts in the northern hemisphere. But this means that we get the light that works best for artists and the artworks." As you walk in, a huge lobby window frames the north Kent horizon like a giant Turner painting (the artist's paintings will be displayed here in the upcoming Turner and the Elements show planned for January 2012, but exhibitions of contemporary artists will be the norm). Walking around the ground floor – a serenely austere interior made of little more than polished concrete and glass – natural light seeps everywhere. It brightens the generous lobby, with its corner cafe overlooking the sandy beach, and animates the big study rooms where adults and school parties alike will learn about contemporary art.

Upstairs in the galleries, the light is channelled through high studio windows and from bands of glass set into the high, sloping roofs. "The idea is very simple", says Chipperfield. "The gallery isn't a museum. It doesn't have a permanent collection. It's a place where art is experienced, nurtured and created. So we've made it as much like a studio as possible. We've also made the gap between the entrance and the galleries as small as we could. I'm not a fan of galleries that can seem like air terminals, where the cafes, shops and everything else appear to take precedence over getting people to the art." Indeed, the atmosphere that permeates Turner Contemporary is one of immediacy and purposefulness. There is indeed a studio-like rawness here that artists will like.



The gallery's opening exhibition, 'Revealed: Turner Contemporary Opens' will be on view from 16th April until 4th September 2011 and will bring together work by the visionary British painter JMW Turner and six contemporary artists. The exhibition centres on Turner’s extraordinary painting The Eruption of the Souffrier Mountains, in the Island of St Vincent, at Midnight, on the 30th of April, 1812, from a Sketch Taken at the Time by Hugh P. Keane, Esqre ,1815, which portrays the drama of a volcanic eruption. Turner never saw the event, but was inspired to make the painting by Keane’s sketch and his interest in the natural world. Turner’s painting is evidence of the power of his imagination and his curiosity about new places and natural phenomena. This desire for knowledge marked the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when many discoveries were made in science and technology and artists and scientists worked in close dialogue. The six contemporary artists in the exhibition work in the same spirit of enquiry, invention and interest in the natural world that flourished during Turner’s lifetime. Just as Turner explored nature in paint and colour, so these contemporary artists play at the borders between what we can see and know and the truly fantastic. Four of the artists have made new work for the opening of Turner Contemporary. Like Turner, their work responds to the special setting of the gallery in Margate, on the North Kent coast. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.turnercontemporary.org

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~