The Turner Prize 2008

We're not going to talk about the computer, OK? Not until after I take it to be examined by geniuses at Apple. I just... can't... *sob*

On to scarcely brighter matters. On Sunday I went to see the Turner Prize exhibition. You remember the Turner Prize, right? Britain's premier contemporary art prize that goes to the best show of the year yadda yadda thingy bla. Now I like art - I even like conceptual art - and I get very irritable when I'm walking around galleries listening to people say that their six year old could paint something that their six year old could under no circumstances paint. But the Turner prize this year is AWFUL. AWFUL. AWFUL. And surprisingly interesting. Which, in case you are wondering, is a breakdown by artist.

Here's my advice if visiting the Turner exhibition. Hotfoot it through Goshka Mauga (derivative collages, soulless sculpture), Cathy Wilkes (ideas-lite installation), and Runa Islam (unimaginative films) and do not pass Go, do not collect £200, until you reach Mark Leckey's Cinema In The Round. The work he displays is entertaining enough to look at (and quite the relief after, say, Wilkes' shop dummy with tampon and birdcage on head) but better even than that is the video he presents of himself delivering a lecture on aspects of art. I have no idea how I rate this as an artwork in itself but it is actually a fascinating lecture, in which Leckey discusses different works of art, from Philip Guston to The Simpsons, in which two dimensional pieces seem to take on three dimensional weight and presence. The sections on cats and the shoeness of shoes are particular joys. It's a long time since I have heard a lecture on - well - anything, and Leckey is pleasingly unpretentious and clear, while thoughtful and complex enough to be genuinely thought-provoking. And did I mention he uses clips from The Simpsons? I enjoyed it so much that I started to panic halfway through, realising how rarely I actually feel like I am learning anything, how rarely I enter a realm of ideas that hasn't been chewed up and spat out for me like a worm for a baby bird, how much time I waste on crappy TV and regurgitated commentary and how little on original thought, and how I must must must do more than that. Then I went home and spent the evening watching DVDs (Northern Exposure, since you ask) and the Strictly results. So it didn't really last.

But then today I saw a news piece that Oxford and Cambridge are putting their lectures on iTunes. So perhaps there is hope for me yet.