Transcript

John Butcher – author

Hi again, it’s Week 3 and it’s art history, and here at the Open University campus we have a great deal of public art on display, and also regular exhibitions of contemporary art in the academic library. It’s the sort of thing you might see in your local town or city. Here in Milton Keynes, our new gallery opened in 1999. It opened with a large exhibition by Gilbert & George, who as you'll find out just a little later in the course won the Turner prize in 1986 for their large scale paintings. But I think we do have to recognise that for many people contemporary art and going into a contemporary gallery can be a somewhat intimidating experience, and one of the things we hope we’ll be doing on this course is providing you with some approaches to help you make meaning of some contemporary art.

But I really want to emphasise that visual imagery is all around us really, we don’t have to go in to contemporary art galleries.

One of my colleagues was going through her cupboards the other day and kindly passed this onto me, and what we've got here is a fascinating example to illustrate really some of the approaches we might take when seeking to understand contemporary art. So we’re looking here at the kind of meaning we can ascribe to this. We think about the effects that are being used, perhaps we consider some of the contextual factors. This image for example was first used in 1924, since then there’s been a little shortening of the kilt and a lengthening of the hair, but that’s been about it, and of course we might end up thinking what exactly is the connection we’re asked to make between a Highland shot putter and porridge? But of course, this is one of the things we’ll be doing in our journey through contemporary art.