In June and July I visited Newlyn Art Gallery three times and saw an exhibition of the work of Laurence Weiner. The exhibition which is open until mid July seemed as empty of ideas as it was of visitors. On each occasion I and my wife were the only people in the gallery apart from the staff and front desk volunteers. I offer these comments.

The notes we were offered on arrival declared that Laurence Weiner is ‘one of the most significant and iconic artists of his generation’ and is ‘a pioneer of the Conceptual Art Movement’. They then propose that ‘the idea can be as poetic as the subject’ (does this mean anything?) and that ‘he uses language to convey ideas, instructions (!) or questions’. What has this to do with visual art? Most of the words or phrases which cover the gallery walls mean nothing to me e.g. ‘& GIVEN & REPLACED’, ‘AN EXPANSION OF FORM’, ‘AN OBJECTIFICATION OF WHICHSOEVER FORM’. Written in large letters across the glass window of the gallery with its sea view are the words ‘AT A DISTANCE TO THE FOREGROUND’ which are written twice so as to be visible both from outside and the inside the gallery. These words together with a few more meaningless phrases completely occupy all the available exhibition space in the newly extended gallery.

I visited the St Ives Tate last week - another gallery with a large grant from the Arts Council. One of the major exhibition spaces there was filled with more ‘work’ by Weiner. It was equally meaningless and was repetition of the depressing emptiness evident at Newlyn. To me the words are neither, poetic, significant nor visually interesting. They display a sort of pretentious emptiness. They seem to me to be a demonstration of a barrenness of ideas which occupy many of our state funded galleries - and some key, fashionable London based galleries. The Newlyn show, for instance, was sponsored by the Lissom Gallery. I got more mental stimulation from doing the Observer cryptic crossword than from my gallery visits.

I decided to inform myself about Laurence Weiner and his work and Googled him . There are many references to him and a mine of information on many sites worldwide although in my innocence I had not heard of him. He appears in a video on the Tate Gallery website where he speaks in a prolonged interview before a quietly respectful audience and a hesitant interviewer. There seemed to me to be an atmosphere of good humoured acceptance of his dubious propositions as he rumbled on with his deep and impressive voice through his equally deep and impressive beard. However, his pronouncements made no more sense to me than they did on my visits to the exhibitions at Newlyn and St Ives. He stated that he comes from the South Bronx in New York and confesses to a liberal left stance. His exhibition, his political stance and his ideas have no interest to me and seem completely irrelevant to my experience of life.

Am I mad or am I missing something that everyone else sees?

Bernard Evans                                 The Weiner Show runs from May to mid July.

www.google.com

Lawrence Weiner