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From: George Büchner Category: Art Date: 25 January 2010 Time: 07:22 AM Review: Having a mid career Survey implies provenance for the deeds of an apprenticed imago, as well as a cast iron assurance that the dizzy heights await this swelling genius. Question. Why are there four Tate Galleries ? Do they represent the four provincial regions of the U.K.? Is there a Tate Scotland, a Tate Wales, a Tate London and a Tate Cornwall? rhetorical but one assumes that Tate St.Ives was established primarily four the sake of the tourist pound and perhaps on the surface, to present some sort of homage to the so called artist colony of the post war decade. The incidence of local or indigenous artists was very low, when St.Ives is heralded as an Artists Colony it's actually just a colony. Since Wallace, Christopher Wood, Hepworth, Nicholson, Lanyon and Bryan Pearce have moved on and there's no regional policy to adopt the culture of Cornwall unless it is initially "de-contaminated" by the Tate's bottom inspectors all the attention is going to be lavished onto fictitious celebrities, burnt out pop stars, retired wannabee's funded by some middle class Daddie's in Cliftons elegant boulevards. There's this confusion about mythology and history, people can use history to create mythology, they can say " I've come down to Cornwall to teach you about art, the history of art and my part in it". These artists are "tour guides", didactic born again creating constructs from recognized truths. Semantically its all above board because we're all bloody post modern and love to pontificate about anything that does'nt actually matter.