Aunty Megan and Rosy, watercolour, gouache and Plaka, 153⁄4x113⁄4in (40x30cm).
I took my Aunty Megan to see the ‘Animals And Us’ exhibition at Turner Contemporary last summer. Her failing eyesight meant that quite a few of the paintings were what she called ‘mere blobs, darling’ as far as she was concerned. There was a huge, soft toy giraffe lying on the floor though, which she loved
Most of the great statements that try to define the ideas behind visual art are to do with re-assessing its status, and the status of artists. Recently these statements seek to justify art in which things that we used to expect from it are now absent – images don’t have to resemble anything we have seen before, or sculpture must exist in this world, not pretend to be in some other dimension, so let’s get rid of the plinth. Art must be available to all, rather than to the cognoscenti. We are all artists. These ideas take the frame of ‘art’ away from things, so we have to look at them afresh.