Charlotte Jansen: Good to see you the other night at the Catlin Prize. And those pointy jazzy shoes of yours... have a good time?

Philippa Snow: Those jazzy shoes were an absolute nightmare; half a size too small, and the tip came off the heel when I - very sensibly - went straight home after the prize (by which I mean: "went for whiskey sours in a dark bar").

CJ: Talking of dark rooms; I meant to ask you what you were doing crouching down on the floor there when I got in?

PS: I was trying to get some signal, in fact, to send my partner a picture of the big blue monster with the caption "I can't believe this is what I do for a job." He responded with "nice suit." A wag. Did you end up feeling terrible the next day, or no? I think if I had stayed, I definitely might have done. In a very professional manner, obviously.

CJ: Well, the aperol cocktails did not help. But they definitely made me very verbose about the art that evening. So, the winner for 2013 was Terry Ryu Kim, who created the installation piece, Screening Solution I, II & III: now 5k richer. Deserved? (deserve-ed?)

PS: I think that it was the slickest work in the show, and I think that it was the most eminently saleable. If I'm absolutely honest, I didn't initially realise that it was an artwork - I thought that it was a piece of elaborate set-dressing, designed to hustle us into the room with, you know, the dancing monster. But that's sort of the point, right? A rat in a maze, pushing a button for a long-remembered treat (read: Campari cocktail). The CCTV, in fact, was sort of eerie and pale and ephemeral and just unheimlich, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-your-own-reflection kind of way.

David Ogle, 08020; Photo by Peter Hope.

CJ: It had a definite finesse to it, and I like that idea, turning visitors into surveilled subjects on a stage in the appropriated public space. But I do think my favourite was the light work in the second room... what did you make of it?

PS: Ah, the David Ogle! Would this have been your winner? I'm always cautious about light works, because they're so easy to make into something good-looking and ultimately, you know, contempo. As with the winning work, one could have this perfectly tastefully in one's home, assuming that "one" were a collector of art, and had a home which was generally palatial. What was it you liked in particular about it - the style, or the content?

CJ: And I know you were a bit disturbed by those Japanese face-tighteners...

PS: Yes, there's an absolutely horrifying informercial for them. Hang on - I'll find it, as we're doing this for the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcYVh-W14E

Shades of Mike Myers in his plastic Shatner mask. I'm quite interested to hear what you thought of these (these being Juno Calypso's images), as they were the winner of the visitors' prize: one thing which did really strike me was the attention to detail, in the colour schemes and the settings. That sort of thing in constructed images of this type always makes me think about, say, Guy Bourdin - there's something very seventies about it. I'm a big Guy Bourdin fan, so that's no small compliment. Some very heavy Lynchian vibes going on there, as well, wouldn't you say?

Juno Calypso, Reconstituted Meat Slices; Courtesy Juno Calypso.

CJ: Shudder. You know how I've hated Lynch since you forced me to watch Blue Velvet. WHY would anyone make such a film.

It’s always interesting at Catlin to see the disparity between the simultaneous visitor's vote (this year won by Juno Calypso) and what the judges select…

PS: I don't say this to deliberately underestimate the public (or the winner of the public vote), but I suppose I always expect their winner to be something that's either appealing to the eye, or that has a certain novelty to it. Honestly, I assumed that the monster piece would be their winner, but Calypso makes a kind of sense, as well; it's the sort of imagery which might look at home in a womenswear campaign, or as the artwork for a Lana Del Ray L.P. (at least, at absolute face value, which is its intention, I think).

(I'm aware that this is making me seem pretentious as all hell, but I sort of am. I apologise.)

CJ: I can’t believe I missed that big fluffy blue monster!

[Part of the performance by Nick Deeley].

PS: I know that this is perhaps not the most important quality in an art work, but it was Goddamned adorable. Intellectually, I was certain that it was a person in a monster suit, and not a real monster. Emotionally, I just wanted to bury my face in that big blue behemoth's chest, and go to sleep. I also felt convinced, on some level, that it would be the big blue monster receiving the prize if Nicky Deeley were to have won, and felt cheated not getting to see the resultant acceptance speech.

(If anybody who knows Nicky Deeley is reading this: I will buy that monster suit.)

CJ: (Oh me too. You can have it for the weekend and holidays).

But really what we should ask ourselves, and each other, is: do canapes distract from art? What is your view on food at openings? And canapes: if consumed in sufficient quantity, can they ever really replace dinner?

PS: "Free food is good food," as I have tattooed over the small of my back - I don't think canapes can ever hurt anything. I didn't actually eat any of these, though - were they any good?

I think maybe next time, they should theme the canapes around the work: I've always felt that more artworks could do with being edible. Sarah Lucas had the right idea with her indecent kebabs.

What did you think of the quality of the venue, by the way? Really quite a stylishly put-together - and well-stocked, in terms of booze and those aforementioned untried-canapes - event, I thought. A real thing for the calendar (you can imagine my air quotes here).

I like the Londonnewcastle space. It’s the second year the Prize has run here and it really fills it, so many shows I’ve seen there don’t know what to do with such endless space, but it has a great flow that really benefits the artists, and I think that more than anything constitutes good curating. The Prize night has become a very popular party event for sure - let’s not forget that it has corporate support, hence all those suits and cocktails, and don’t try to smoke a joint the in garden by the way - but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Justin Hammond [the Catlin Prize curator] knows how to work both things together, and it’s ultimately doing a good thing for emerging artists.

—Philippa Snow & Charlotte Jansen

(Image on top: Nicky Deeley performing Island Year; photograph by Emily Hasell.)

Gavin Turk: his work is mature and yet provocative; he has made a living as an artist and not sold out; and his ideas retain an urgency from not being overstated. But who is Gavin Turk? This exhibition provides a timely opportunity to unravel one of the forgotten stars of the YBA movement.

Turk’s practice has often revolved around ideas concerning authorship, authenticity and value. ‘The Years’ reminds us that Turk handles these ideas with great intellectual subtlety rather than manufacturing them to the point of sterility, and they are lusciously infused with a keen sense of history that neither gushes nor diminishes into obscurity.

Gavin Turk, Holy Egg (Pink), 2013,173 x 122 cm; Courtesy of the Artist and Ben Brown Fine Arts Ltd.

Turk is not concerned with the rampant commercial artworld creation of value, but with a continual critique of the very concept of value in art. Refreshingly, the value of art is a perennially open question and not an unassailable tautology. The famous rubbish bags, such as Refuse (2012), still have the power to enact their dual critique: on the one hand, a comment on the dreary complaint that modern art is ‘rubbish’, but also, a rumination on the legacy of Duchamp. The joy of Turk’s work is precisely this wry counterpoint between a banal joke and a clever idea, where you never quite know which it is supposed to be.

Indeed, Gavin Turk has a confused identity in his work – he is only a name and a fluid point in art history. So we have the artist’s initials rendered in bullet-like holes on Technicolor eggs (Holy Egg, 2003), in reference to Fontana, or his signature rubbish bag on the surface of a gleaming mirror as a nod towards Pistoletto (Pistoletto’s Rubbish, 2013). The relentless appearance of the artist’s name is essential to the strand of his work focused on authorship. The most ecstatic version of which in this exhibition is the huge Pollock drip painting, The Nubians of Plutonia (2009), created by Turk dripping his signature over and over again. You marvel at the brashness of a Pollock repeatedly signed by Turk as a statement of ownership or theft of intellectual property from history – as if authorship, authenticity and ultimately value meant anything at all. This, the most edifying joke in the show, is brilliantly curated so that, as you enter the gallery, you are so captivated by the glowing neon and shiny mirror ahead of you, that the Pollock eventually just creeps up on you as you make your circuit round the gallery.

Gavin Turk, The Nubians of Plutonia, 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 400 cm; Courtesy of the Artist and Ben Brown Fine Arts Ltd.

This exhibition offers a careful selection of work that perfectly demonstrates Turk’s intellectual clarity and aesthetic prowess. Considering the ingenuity, humour and complexity of his work, not to mention the fact that he has made millions for Hirst by pioneering painted bronze, it is a wonder that Turk is not just a bit more famous than he is. Turk’s problem is that he has not been shocking or spectacular or gruesome enough for the YBA generation. Instead he chose to make art which constantly ensures that you never quite know what’s going on. It is this perpetual uncertainty, coupled with a conceptual programme that cuts against the grain of current values, that makes Gavin Turk an important and appropriately underestimated contemporary artist.

—Daniel Barnes

(Image on top: Gavin Turk, Evil Eye, 2012, Poured acrylic paint on tondo canvas, 150 x 150 x 3.5 cm; Courtesy of the Artist and Ben Brown Fine Arts Ltd.)

Liminal Squared is the latest exhibition to fill the walls of White Cube’s Bermondsey gallery, fittingly soloed by explorative artist (environmentally speaking) Julie Mehretu. In her first solo show with Jopling, Mehretu exposits a hefty series of geometric abstract paintings, that are at once intended to be grand in scale, intricate in detail, and bold in their depiction of contemporary urban chaos.

The series, entitled Mogamma, sets out to convey a frenetic energy of gatherings that originate from the revolutionary air of political protests from the Arab Spring of 2011. Set amidst the outlines of grand facades, and indecipherable locations, Mehretu uses complex layers, fixating dots and scattered splashes of colour in an attempt to evoke pertinent feelings of disposition and social anxiety. What is most inspiring about Mehretu’s work is the interplay between political and artistic expression. Her precise emphasis in using digital drawing to create sharp, stubborn architectural sketches—seen in the backgrounds of her blueprint-like paintings—are complemented by a freer, more relaxed technique of smudged compositions, creating a contrast with the authoritative outlines of buildings. Impressive viewing as singular works of fine detail: an intricate mess.

Julie Mehretu, Mogamma: Part 1, 2012, 180 x 144 in. (457.2 x 365.8 cm), Ink and acrylic on canvas; Photo: Ben Westoby.

In the south gallery, we are introduced to the artist’s formulative sketches and paintings in what seek to explore, as Mehretu herself puts it, ‘The multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity.’ Where some are more defined with outlines of utopian cityscapes, others (at this stage) seem unrelated and to some extent ineffectual, when trying to display a coherent development of separate and/or conjoined identities of the artists’ wider theme of revolution.

On reflection, I feel that Liminal Squared is better placed in mind, especially when tackling Mehretu’s chosen subject of social geographic disruption. From first impressions, one may struggle to formulate her concept that is detailed in such an abstract sense, and although White Cube’s chasmal surroundings complement Mehretu’s grand scaling work, the expression of social and political dissonance loses a sense of urgency, and overall, its collective identity, in the complexity of its abstraction.

—Fred Paginton

(Image on top: Julie Mehretu, Installation view; Courtesy of the Artist and White Cube, Bermondsey / Photo: Ben Westoby.)