Some Thoughts on Tate Britain's Turner Exhibition

     Tate Britain is eerily quiet. Inside its halls the sound of street traffic is muffled like bombs above an underground shelter, or the warped boomings heard when inside a submarine. There are more attendants waiting around than vistors. They are friendly, and you get the sense this friendliness is training-influenced.

    I ask for the Turner exhibition, and I am almost rebuked. I am told it is the Turner's Modern World exhibition. But inside, the vast majority of paintings are Turners. On reflection, perhaps Tate Britain wishes to emphasise that this exhibition is not so much about the man Turner, but the Britain that he painted through his eyes.

    And this is exactly what this exhibition is about. It attempts to draw together a British nationalism, using the most iconic of British painters (and represented in the early rooms through sketches of rural England and in paintings of victories against the French), and background it with a demonstration of technological development and socially progressive policy (1832 Reform Bill and 1834 Abolition of Slavery).

    The message is clear for us empowered 21st century visitors: it is possible to be prosperous, progressive, and patriotic. 

    It's just a shame that the only people there to see the exhibition (which deemed a "Content Warning", and information about "enslavement" necessary) were pensioners, or German, or myself.