CALLING A SPADE A SPOON
A boiling hot day  was only temporarily relieved by a downpour that sent people scuttling inside, lots of visitors and lots of people up for talking to âthe woman in the white coatâ. That was me and, as an âexpertâ,  I was inviting people to look at the exhibition  annotations and see if they found them entirely trustworthy. âAsk yourself why we give objects certain qualitiesâ I said, âMaybe you can think of other ones. Look around you. Whoâs to say a pepper grinder isnât a mechanical sneeze accelerator?â
Annotations have always fascinated me, their form as much as their content, the way in which they direct you to see things in a certain way. I had a lot of conversations with people who seemed quite pleased to be given the opportunity to say they didnât have a clue what it was all about.
â Itâs interesting to talk to someone who doesnât think Iâm dumbâ
âIâm really glad youâre doing this. It gives regular people a chance to burst the bubble of âthe bogus religiosity and undue reverence given to modern art.â
âIâve always been the sort of person to believe what i was toldâŚâ
I suggested people may like to make their own annotations around the building or to think how they would re-annotate the objects in the exhibition. Just look at things a little differentlyâŚ. hereâs some of them doing that:
   Having thought about this for a while, two visitors went downstairs to  gallery 1. âWe have laughedâ they said, when they came back. I thought that was probably a good thing.
