The Tate Modern has barred artist, Edgeworth Johnstone from entering the gallery because of leaflets about the Tate Turner Prize in his bag.
Visitors beware: this leaflet is not allowed in Tate Modern.
Johnstone, a member of the Stuckists art movement, said “I had protest leaflets titled “The Stomach Turner Prize”. I made it clear that I had no intention of distributing them inside the gallery and offered to deposit them with security, if they were worried, but they refused. They said: ‘We can’t have these in the building.’ I was absolutely astonished at their attitude.”
Their attitude is even more astonishing as the Tate gallery archive includes earlier Stuckist leaflets criticising the Turner Prize, and Sir Nicholas Serota (Tate Director 1988-2017) once wrote to me: “we should ensure that the Tate Archive, as the national record of art in Britain, properly represents the contribution of the Stuckist movement to debates about contemporary art in recent years … recording your various events and demonstrations, particularly relating to Tate and the Turner Prize.”
Johnstone exhibited his work at Tate Modern in the No Soul For Sale exhibition in 2010 after submissions selected by a jury including noted art critic Louisa Buck.
He has now written to the Tate asking: “Is it Tate’s policy to bar admission, if a visitor is in possession of material criticising the Turner Prize or Tate, or other material, which is perfectly legal, but which the Tate deems unacceptable? If so, why is this not made clear in the visitor information and displayed on notices outside the entrance to avoid embarrassing situations?” He asked for “a formal apology” and requested “suitable compensation”, suggesting “free membership for myself and a guest as a Tate member for the next 12 months.”
Le Bas (left) and Johnstone (right): spot the difference competition.
But Johnstone has an even bigger grudge against the Turner Prize this year, alleging that part of Incipit Vita Nova (Thus Begins a New Life), one of the exhibits by Delaine Le Bas, bears a striking resemblance to part of one of his artworks shown on YouTube for the last four years.
Johnstone’s video shows a chequer pattern and, a few seconds later, a figure with loose, draped clothing and a clown-type head, next to a vertical column of simple hand-written sums, beginning “1 x 2 = 2”.
Le Bas’s installation has a figure with loose, draped clothing and an animal-type head with random chequer pattern elements superimposed over part of it, next to a vertical column of sums, hand-written in a style identical to Johnstone’s and beginning “1 + 1 = 2”.
You be the judge. But before you do so, please bear in mind that to be au courant in the artworld you must realise that “plagiarism” is now outmoded terminology, to be replaced by “recontextualisation” or some such. “Appropriation” will do, as long as it’s not “cultural”. Damien Hirst was rather more brazen, blazing the trail in 2006 and declaring he “didn’t have any shame about stealing other people’s ideas. You call it a tribute”. It gives another – and undoubtedly unintended, but delightfully Freudian – meaning to the large red banner hanging on the frontage of the gallery with white lettering “Free for all”.
The rest of the world hasn’t quite cottoned on and the Turner Prize has come under fire previously for plagiarism, when Glenn Brown’s sci-fi paintings in 2000 were close replicas of existing sci-fi illustrations of a flying saucer. Johnstone certainly hasn’t caught up and said “There seems to be a tradition of plagiarism in people favoured by the Turner Prize, notably Damien Hirst, the winner in 1995. One of the artists who suffered at his hands was Lori Precious, an American who visited me a few years ago and whose kaleidoscopic butterfly designs were exhibited before Hirst did his versions. People now seem to think that she has copied him.”
Tracey Emin, a nominee for the prize in 1999, has been accused by her ex-boyfriend Billy Childish of using some of his work in hers. Stuckist artist Abby Jackson had a painting copied by Mark Wallinger (albeit with her permission) as part of his winning 2007 Turner Prize exhibition.
Turner Prize demo 2024 by Edgeworth Johnstone, Miss Libby Palmer and Emma Pugmire.
IJohnstone proceeded to demonstrate outside Tate Britain all of Turner Prize day last Tuesday with a placard against “The Stomach Turner Prize”, as well as a placard protesting “plagiarism” (see above). He was accompanied by colleagues, Emma Pugmire and Miss Libby Palmer. At one point he was approached by a woman with a red Tate lanyard, who pointed to his placard and said mysteriously and somewhat ominously: “The big institutions won’t like this,” though not explaining why, nor which big institutions she had in mind. I feel fairly confident the big institutions won’t give a monkey’s about it.
He was somewhat upstaged in the evening by rather more plentiful and vociferous demonstrators for other causes: “Libby had long gone home by the time the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel counter demos arrived, at around six o’clock, and Emma had chosen that moment to wander off somewhere, leaving me on my own, swamped in pro-Palestinians chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’, waving huge Palestinian flags with music blaring from a nearby PA system.
It was getting increasingly rowdy, and I felt – and must have looked – ridiculous, holding up ‘The Stomach Turner Prize’ placard and standing behind a shopping trolley propping up one about ‘Plagiarism’, so I shuffled through the crowd, carrying the demo stuff through the pro-Israel demonstrators. I could see the Turner Prize guests being escorted through the throng into the building. Police were everywhere. No one was interested in my demo. I couldn’t find Emma, so went home. Thankfully, I wasn’t wearing my pig mask by then.”
Meanwhile Jasleen Kaur was awarded the Turner Prize for supporting the Palestinian cause, as she made plain during her acceptance speech. Sorry, what? My bad. She was actually awarded it for covering a car with a doily, an over-size one of the type my mother used cover the coffee table with.
Edgeworth Johnstone (with mask) in “anti Turner Prize” demo 2020.
Edgeworth Johnstone is, along with Ron Throop in Oswego NY and Donald Takeshita-Guy (recently moved to exile in Lincoln, somewhere in the North of England), one of the most active Stuckist artists. He is prolific, innovative, original and more than a little perverse, staging in 2020 another demo against the Turner Prize, initially deliberately held at the wrong venue (the National Gallery) on the wrong day with a wrong placard, announcing “Stuckism is wrong”.
He regularly collaborates with Billy Childish (Tracey Emin’s ex-partner) on paintings with the duo name Heckel’s Horse. They have exhibited their work at Pushkin House. His great-uncle won the Victoria Cross in the Boer War and his great-grandfather was boxing champion Edgeworth Johnstone, after whom he is named (but don’t hold these two predecessors against him).
I have now, by Googling, discovered a page headed “Tate Gallery Rules”, which is in the URL under the “visit” section, although the “visit” page has no apparent link to it. One of the rules is; “We reserve the right not to allow any bag, parcel, or other item to be brought into the Gallery.” This is somewhat alarming. What criteria are applied to determine exclusion? The wrong fashion brand? A bag with an unacceptable logo? One that says FCUK or even FUCK? And what “other items” are banned? A bugle? A packet of condoms? We need to know.
Another rule is “Campaign materials are not permitted into the building.” What are “campaign materials”? A soldier bringing an army map? Maybe not that kind of campaign. Ah, someone with a leaflet promoting the Labour or Conservative party on their person? Obviously someone with a leaflet satirising the Turner Prize.
Under the heading “Behaviour”, there is the staunch proclamation: “We are committed to ensuring that Tate galleries are safe, inclusive and respectful places. We will take immediate action when this is not supported by those visiting our sites.” The Tate Press office informed me: “campaign/protest material isn’t always identifiable but when it is we do ask people not to bring it in and it’s returned when they leave the buildings. It does apply to banners and leaflets etc.”
The implication of that statement is that such material is required to be left with Tate officials, but why should perfectly legal personal property of members of the public be subjected to this kind of interference by a publicly-funded institution? It presumes the visitor is intending to distribute such material inside the gallery, in which case surely there should be the reasonable rule stating that this is not permitted, rather than presuming guilty intent, and also for any such rules to be clearly visible prior to entry.
It demonstrates the confusion and arbitrariness of the protocol that Johnstone had previously been permitted without any qualms by security to take the same leaflets into Tate Britain, while the Turner Prize exhibition was in progress there – and he didn’t hand them out inside the gallery. He was actually distributing them to local shops.
These are not “campaign materials”. A megaphone is “respectful” in the gallery.
Last November, I was in Tate Modern while a pro-Palestine demonstration was taking place. Banners were draped over the balcony and a Palestinian flag displayed with the slogan “Boycott Israel”. Leaflets were handed out. Slogans were shouted through a megaphone. There was no attempt by the watching security staff to “take immediate action” or any other form of action for that matter. The Tate’s definition of “campaign materials” is as perplexing as its definition of art. That’s Postmodernism for you.
NOTES
Photos: Edgeworth Johnstone. Palestine demo photos: Charles Thomson
The Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix gallery representing Delaine Le Bas has been contacted for comment.
The Tate Head of Visitor Communications has replied to Johnstone that his complaint has been “passed to our Head of Visitor Experience and Senior Security Manager to investigate.”