Gateshead has an Art Gallery right next to the famous winking bridge. Housed in a former flour mill, it has five floors of galleries with scenic glass elevators, as well as a striking (and slightly bouncy) steel staircase the full height of the building (the stair-well of which has also been used as exhibition space on occasions).

Last Friday, Grandma Pat, young David and myself passed an hour or so in the space. David and I had visited previously and it was interesting to notice how the exhibits were completely different, but yet, something of the same in their resonance.

Starting as high as the lift normally takes you to level five, there is a balcony looking over into the highest gallery on level four. (There is a Restaurant on level six but it is reservations only). There is also the viewing box- a large projecting window out towards the five town bridges of the Tyne, namely the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the Tyne Bridge (the one like the Sydney Harbour one), the Swing Bridge, the High Level Bridge (both rail and road), and Redheugh Bridge. (There are two more beyond, the Metro tramway bridge and the Western bypass bridge which used to be near the Chain Bridge and then a Box Girder replacement that had to be dismantled when they all started collapsing).

On level four, the exhibit was by Brian Eno (of Roxy Music) and was called Constellations (77 Million Paintings). The visitor is presented with 42 plasma and LCD screens of various sizes arranged quasi-symmetrically on a black wall in a darkened gallery. The screens appear to show static images but if you stay there long enough, they can be seen to imperceptably change accompanied by something described as interwoven sound ambient music.

Two couches and three benches across the centre of the gallery provided a suitable position to watch the ever-changing slides. I expected David to lose interest rapidly but he was fascinated, pointing out shapes and patterns that were gradually coming or going. Me being me, I worked out which screens were showing the same image in a different orientation and what hardware the computers probably had installed…

Moving down through the building, the next level had very large photo portraits by Brazilian Artist Vik Muniz. He photographs the faces reconstructed using differing materials (sometimes related to the topic), such as soil, toy soldiers, diamonds, berries, chocolate and even blood for Bloody Marilyn.

Below on level two, there was a smaller exhibition by American Artist Joseph Havel (the rest of the gallery was closed off beyond). the theme was night and the exhibits included a sort of suspended draped sheet made up entirely of cloth labels with the word “dream”, a curtain made up of stars cut out of American Flags and bent wire wrapped in shirt material and shaped into words. There were also a large number of shallow boxes arranged in a rectangle that also appeared to be full of cloth labels but it wasn’t clear what they said (or what the idea was).

Down on level one, a rather curious Marcus Coates exhibition of audio-visual impersonated birdsong was in progress, blogged about in another post. This was occasionally funny as well!

At Ground level, Indian Artist Subodh Gupta had created a new work which consisted of hundreds of stainless steel pots stacked in various sizes and groupings, slowly inching their way around a long endless track zig-zagging across a large square table on a mechanism not unlike airport luggage belts and a layout reminiscent of queues in large post offices. There were two other installations in the room. One was a heap of sacks, the other some sort of rubbery rods drooping drom the wall three-dimensionally.

The Baltic has a large gift shop with some unusual items that you won’t find in your municipal museum, including a range of Danish rubbery household items in vivid colours and an artistic flair such as washing up bowls and dustpan & brush sets. You can also buy a DVD of the famous installation where thousands of people got their kit off and stood on the Millennium bridge. David found this a bit disturbing because of all of the boobies and wasn’t overly convinced that it was OK because it was being done for artistic reasons. And no, he couldn’t take his clothes off and lie on the bridge, that would be silly…

For readers who are not familiar with the levels of child protection paranoia prevalent in the UK, it must first be realised that all men are potential child rapists and all women potential child abusers (or vica versa). In order to protect children (or vulnerable adults) from harm by predatory adults, everyone who works with children has to be “checked out” against the Police National Computer database. A noble aspiration in itself, until it comes to the implementation.

The scheme is run by an outfit called the Criminal Records Bureau and most of the actual legwork is carried out by the large outsourcing organisations such as Crapita. They produce a document called a Disclosure and there are two varieties of them, the more penetrating version being known as an enhanced disclosure.

Teachers require them in order to stay in a job and if they move jobs, they can’t start work again until they are re-cleared- even if their most recent one was indeed very recent. Everyone who works in a school now needs them and it is now a budget line in every education establishment balance sheet.

It isn’t just teachers of course. I know someone who does mountain rescue and is involved with the Scouting movement. He tells me that he has four current disclosures as different bits of the movement require their own checks and they don’t accept checks made by others. As there is only one database, why is this? Well, the procedure involves producing various bits of personal information as part of the process to prove who you are and an organisation cannot be certain that another did it entirely correctly, better to be safe than sorry and all that.

I’m now on to my third disclosure with “Right to Read” and whilst they are supposedly good for two years, the mileage is more like 18 months (as passports with only six months to go will not get you into some countries). Of course, they are only really good for the day they were issued as you could get convicted the day afterwards…

What does a disclosure look like? It is a green watermarked long sheet of paper A4 width with purple printing. It has an eight digit number and a twelve digit reference as well as stuff about the applicant and the registered body approved for submitting disclosure requests. Further down are five important boxes, headed as follows:

-Police Records of Convictions, Cautions, Reprimands and Final Warnings
-Information from the list held under Section 142 of the Education Act 2002
-Protection of Children Act List information
-Protection of Vulnerable Adults List information
-Other relevant information disclosed at the Chief Police Officer(s) discretion

Fortunately, mine all have the words NONE RECORDED apart from the fourth, which says NOT REQUESTED. Each time I have waited for the new form, I have always had a small doubt in the back of my mind that I may have been convicted without my knowledge and the whole sordid truth will erroneously appear due to computer error…

The back of the form has stuff about the legal aspects, a disclaimer from the CRB about how it isn’t actually responsible for the accuracy of police records and how to contest errors.

Why do I think it is such a waste of time? Well, apparently, three million of these things have now been issued, at £45 or so a pop. This is frequently public money in the public sector merry-go-round or often funding that could be better spent in voluntary organisations. There are mechanisms for getting “free” disclosures in the voluntary sector but it isn’t straight-forward and at the end of the day someone pays for it.

“But it is all worthwhile if it protects the children…” the bleeding heart liberals cry, but does it? The scouting movement has a crisis of grass-roots volunteers as far too many people just can’t be bothered with the hastle and the unspoken implication that you must be dodgy until proven otherwise. (Most Akelas and Baloos in Cubs & Beavers I have come across are women these days which is an interesting turn-around as the converse is not the case in Rainbows & Brownies). The disclosure is seen as a means of delegating potential future blame by those in responsibility, rather than using common sense and instinct. The Disclosures are also occasionally wrong, both in blaming the innocent and exonerating the guilty.

There is also talk of subjecting school Governors to disclosure. School Governors are volunteers from various walks of life who make the strategic school decisions with the management team (as much as the Local and Central Government permits them to within the somewhat prescriptive system in Britain). Currently, Governors are checked on appointment against something called List 99, otherwise known as the sex offenders register. Fortunately, our Chairman of Governors is shrewd enough to realise that this would be a waste of school budget as Governors are not put in a position where they would be left alone with children and would rarely see them anyway outside of assemblies and Year visits. I am a school Governor and found myself doing another four year term recently in order to help out as part of the new Head Teacher selection process, despite wanting to stand down and give Karen a chance. However, if Disclosure becomes mandatory, I am pig-headed enough to tell them where to stick their stinking gringo disclosure, even if I’ve got another one in the drawer at home (which they probably wouldn’t accept anyway…)

When I was about sixteen, I was introduced to a friend of a friend of mine. He wanted to talk to me because I was going down to London to stay with a fellow young scientist for a lecture and he was looking for a bed for the night (or two) to tout his portfolio to Arts College. He showed me his collection and explained his current meme. He was good at drawings & cartoons, the artists thematic joke being that he drew Irish workmen with spanners, all of which were too big for the nuts & bolts that needed adjusting. He explained it very well and I found it both entirely different from my own experience and rather clever, once it had been explained to me

One all-night bus journey a few days later, we landed at my friend’s house in Penge, South London. He was called Robert Spackman and had the proverbial brain the size of a planet. I had met him a year or two earlier through Young Scientists and we got on well despite our dispirate backgrounds. He listened to my friend’s friend’s meme with a wry impatience of the easily unimpressed and this was my first stark demonstration of the “so what?” style of assertive disinterest so useful in getting rid of those who want to sell you snake oil (or IT solutions). I watched as the confident artist eventually ran out of patter and visibly wilted. He left with his tail between his legs and I never saw him again…

Why had the simple act of polite indifference been so caustic? Probably because the artist had been constantly told how clever he was and how original his ideas were by all of those “modern parents” arty-farty types at school and college. A bitter reality pill effortlessly applied by someone massively better informed than him had brought him down to earth with a big bump.

The Spackman world view introduced me to a healthy skepticism for modern art. Skills in crafting the actual work of art are to be much admired (as I am personally strongly lacking in them) but many of the memes are contrived, contrary or just kidology.

However, after my recent trip to the Baltic, I’ve now realised that I might have the makings of a contemporary artist. Consider the following scenario:-

First of all, I’d go to a quarry somewhere in Northumberland with some sound equipment in a camper van. As the birds started chirruping the dawn chorus, I’d record as much as possible with a set of fourteen micrphones. I’d document this very accurately so that I had identified what each bird was and when it was singing. Not content with this, I’d visit other locations and repeat the exercise so that I have amassed hundreds of hours of birdsong.

Now, on to phase two. I’d need to identify a number of singers willing to impersonate birds. To help them, I’d slow down the original recordings so that the sounds were in human range, record them and speed them up again afterwards. For some birds this would be very straight-forward, but for some birds such as the blackbird, it would be incredibly difficult as they have two windpipes. The technique wouldn’t just be singing, it would require grunts and clicks.

Stage three would be to film the singers performing their bird impersonations, but for the twist, I’d film them in their own natural habitats such as bedrooms, living rooms, waiting rooms, cars, baths and sheds. I’d also film them in the room not singing or the empty room as well. As I’d have to film the entire song and speed it up, an hour’s worth of filming would equal about four minutes on the screen.

Then for the installation. I’d find a suitable darkened space in a gallery of contemporary art, say the Baltic in Gateshead. I’d lay out fourteen screens around the gallery in the same position as the original microphones were in the quarry at head height or above. I’d wire them up for multi-channel audio to play the re-created birdsong and arrange multiple video projectors to show the footage. I’d plan a performance cycle of just over eighteen minutes and then have fun arranging the show to entertain and amuse visitors.

Would you come and see it, especially if you hadn’t heard of me? You probably would if it was on in the Baltic and the £3 suggested admission fee was optional. The other niggle with my future potential success as a Young British Artist to rival Tracy Emin is that someone else has thought of it first, the British Artist Marcus Coates.

From the exhibition catalogue…

“Marcus Coates’ practice has continually questioned the ways in which we relate to other species. His films and performances address definitions of humanness through the investigation of cross species consciousness. Metamorphosis through voice and sound is a state that Coates has long been exploring, and he has established a reputation for producing fascinating films in which the human voice accurately mimics complex and beautiful birdsong. Dawn Chorus is the latest and most ambitious project in this series.”

Oh dear, this is where I would fail miserably as a contemporary artist, having the effect of an inverse shit sandwich. I could quite merrily carry out all of the planning and implementation for a project such as the above. The trouble would be that I lack original creativity. Armed with a proverbial blank canvas, I would have an equally blank mind. (My strengths come in reflecting and expanding the sparks of others). The other point where I would fail miserably would be at the end, where I had to come up with some equally deep, trite and credible bluster to justify the installation and also justify the large sums of money I would have to tap someone up for (probably the Arts Council, a bit like our Town Coiuncil in that we spend other people’s money but it doesn’t really make any difference either way). Why would I fail miserably? I’d have trouble keeping a straight face…