ARTES MUNDI 5- 3 days left!

The National Museum says that,
        'Artes Mundi is Wales' biggest and most exciting visual art exhibition. It's the UK's largest art prize and one of the most important in the world...explores social themes from across the globe with insight,compassion and humour. From popular culture to politics, from death to displacement, the use of painting, sculpture,installation,photography, film and performance offers an artistic platform for commentary on the world we live in today.'

    We'd missed all the events associated with the exhibition at the Museum and at venues across Cardiff, that started in October 12 and finishes this Sunday,13th of Janaury 2013.  What a pity! This is such a thought provoking exhibition and has developed considerably over the years. This is the fifth bi-annual exhibition. If you can't make it by Sunday, downloadable audio tours are available from ww.artesmundi.org, but I'm not sure how long these will be available.
    We decided to take the reality tour and were lucky to have an outstanding guide, Heloise Godfrey. Art of now can be very challenging and it's easy enough to dismiss it without understanding its context and meaning. Heloise didn't lecture us, she asked us questions,'How does this make you feel?','What's your immediate reaction?,' What do you think?' She helped us see the multi-layeredness of the pieces about what it is to be human, and come to our own conclusions. The tour was informative, the exhibition fascinating, intriguing, moving and as ever made me ask of some pieces,'But is it art?'
     Artists include Swedish Miriam Backstrom,Cuban Tania Bruguera,Phil Collins, Indian Sheela Gowda, Mexican Teresa Margolles, Darius Miksys, and Apolonija Sustersic. The judges' winner was Teresa Margolles, whose macabre and moving pieces set in a morgue are about violent deaths caused by drug gangsters in Mexico.
      While we were on the tour, the audience vote was being counted. My suspicion is that the audience vote will go to Miriam Backstrom. Her piece is a huge tapestry of cotton, wool, silk and lurex woven in Flanders. It depicts figures in a room composed of mirror fragments, creating millions of reflections. The more you look into it the more there is to see and think about.  The reason I think this will win the audience vote is because of the sophistication of the medium and becuase it is so well crafted.  It reminded me of Grayson Perry's work- a combination of interesting ideas, an original narrative and extremely well crafted.
      For me the photography of Phil Collins is not unlike the work of Martin Parr, and therefore not particularly original; Sustersic's Tiger Bay Project is more like social history. I liked Tania Bruguera's performance piece of police on real horses in the Museum foyer(we watched the video) on the subject of power and control. I admire her Immigrant Respect political campaign. But overall, I think I'm with Grayson Perry, that to stand up as serious art, the piece not only has to ask questions and challenge but  should also include craftmanship in the process. Tell me what you think!