Disapointment

Stills put their new exhibition up couple of weeks ago. Not a very good one, unfortunately - again.

The text explaining the whole concept of the arteest idea is muddy and not very well written imho ('history has the ability to not only to reflect experience, but also to construct and create it through speculation' Hey, what eaxtly does it mean? Is it still history if it speculates? If it actually means anything or the curator was just to write a certain amount of words and had to fill in the gaps with something that sounds complicated enough to actually not to mean anything?), the whole idea of showing the opium trading lacks concept, pictures are made in this typical way where documentary photography is just badly exectuted so that it can pose as modern art instead. All in all a disappointing afternoon and what is worse we will be stuck with this exhibition for months on end as the funding is short and they keep therse shows for 3 to 4 months instead (and it is at least a third bad one in a row already!). Why the only proper photogallery in Edinburgh actually never shows any GOOD photography (there are so many good documentary photographers around who are not actually posing as artists who use photography as their medium?) while there is so many good projects around which actually never can get shown? People who, if they go to Calcutta to photograph an example of the opium trade, are going to come up with something more viasually and conceptually sophisticated than a b&w picture of a derelict house shot form two different points of view and shown without any explanation or introduction whatsoever. Unfortunately I know how this business works and it the artist was not living in NY but in for example Esbjerg, nobody would bat an eyelid to show his works in a nice, prestigeous gallery. So annoying and disappointing!

Or is it just a saying shown in practice that modern art = I could do that + yeah, but you did not.