Towner Gallery, EastbourneFilmed in Istanbul in more liberal times, a newly poignant Smiths karaoke session redeems an otherwise banal survey of pop culture in artIt takes less than 10 minutes to scoot around Now, Today, Tomorrow and Always, a diminutive new show at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne that aims to explore the effect of pop culture on contemporary artists, and at first sight it´s all a bit underwhelming: even The Uses of Literacy (1997), an installation by Jeremy Deller comprising drawings and poems gathered from fans of the Manic Street Preachers, fails much to stir me (until now, I´ve never seen anything by the brilliant Deller that I didn´t like).But just as I´m about to give up and leave, I force myself to sit down and watch something I passed on earlier: dünya dinlemiyor (2005), a video by 2006 Turner prize nominee Phil Collins. I´ll give it 10 minutes, I think. Forty minutes later I´m still there, mesmerised.`The passing of time/ leaves empty lives,´ a woman warbles. These days, President Erdogan is in every line Continue reading...
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