Art attacks

The five-yearly British Art Show arrived in Nottingham last month, and I was lucky enough to see it. Held in three venues across the city, the show’s admirable, if ultimately subjective, aim is to showcase the best of contemporary British art. The work on display covers a barrage of mediums, from video installation to drawing to oil painting through to mixed media sculptures. After the run finishes in Nottingham in early January, the exhibition will go touring to Glasgow and London’s Hayward Gallery.

Even for such an expansive show, it throws a lot at you. The segment in the Castle opens in particularly eye-catching fashion, with a large head - open mouthed, the monstrosity is dribbling out something like vomit. Thankfully not a metaphor for what is to come, although the art doesn’t immediately get much more savory. Through the door, Sarah Lucas produces one of her more distinctive pieces with the Anish Kapoor-esque NUD(3) which mixes up the sexual and the scatological. Performing a highwire act between these two (but not entirely opposing) extremes makes it hard to tear your eyes away – regardless of the seductive shapes, its power thrives in the indecision it leaves its viewers.

Not everything is as confrontational. Charles Avery’s drawings are from the David Shrigley school of scribbling, but retain a fun, if macabre, idiosyncrasy of their own. Elsewhere, Christian Marclay’s film Clock, which had also been playing at London’s White Cube gallery recently, is entirely beguiling (if at the opposite end of the city in the New Art Exchange, and a bit of a trudge). It’s both technically impressive and a reminder of how obsessed we are all with time – not just the passing of it, but the recording of it too. Best of all is Wolfgang Tilmans’ expansive frieze Freischwimmer 155 – an immersive, beautiful display of emerald green, laced with a dark, but intriguing, murk.

As is the nature of such a large revue, some of the artworks baffle rather than dazzle. The usually reliable Karla Black (whose solo show last year at Oxford Contemporary Art impressed) seems to be going through the motions with her two contributions, located in the multi-storied Nottingham Contemporary space. One of her works is even crammed into a corner, somewhat defeating the changeable, movable feast aspect which can make her so engaging – her plastic bag-esque hanging piece in Oxford, springing to mind in this regard. Also, Brian Griffith‘s leering, bug-eyed tent seems , at best, a fun party trick or, at worst, a wodge of recycled surrealism. When is a tent not a tent? When it doesn’t have a door, clearly.

That said, it’s hard to think – Saatchi’s latest survey of contemporary art included – which could be more provocative, discussion-worthy and exciting. And with its genius touch of opening in the provinces, it’s a move which requires those trendy Londoners who want to join in this cutting edge discussion to break out of the cosmopolitan confines of the capital.