January 26th, 2019

I find myself so often disappointed when coming across a new artist and their work when a little research quickly reveals them to be what is best described as a 'one trick pony'. The work of committed and talented artists reaches a maturity, a level of intellectual insight and profundity that stirs, challenges and inspires, and it rewards more with each visit. This has always been my belief, but I find myself of late challenging the rigorous personal standards I have always adhered to. I have begun to suspect that much can be forgiven if the trick is a really good one. So, abandoning decades of dogged adherence in the winter years, hopefully not, I tell myself it's merely re-calibration. If a trick is truly a good one then there is a desire to see it again and it should sustain all the magic of it's first outing. 

I remember when this went up and how I was affected by it, brilliant work, Rachel Whiteread. It was always destined to be a temporary work and was demolished a few months after it's completion. You really would have thought someone would have had the sense to recognise this was a work of international importance, but perhaps it's disappearance has enhanced it's iconic status, it did however launch Rachel Whiteread's career and deservedly won her a Turner prize. When you consider how the slick infantile work of Banksy is scraped off walls to be treasured and lauded well it beggars belief that the House was lost. But then your bubble could be burst, because just when you think you missed the bus along come a dozen more, and you do wonder, is this one of those tricks  that is diminished by repetition, I suppose we could pose that question to many, Mr Gormley for one, but I'm not going there.

 I suppose  if you only want to see a trick once, you shouldn't hang around  magicians.