When artist, writer and musician Kim Gordon announced Assemble as the winner of the 2015 Turner Prize at Tramway in Glasgow on Monday night, she played an absolute doozy. This wasn't just because she mentioned the city's seminal 1980s Sunday psych-punk-indie club, Splash 1, where her old band Sonic Youth played an early Scottish show. While that alone was an acknowledgment of the DIY energy that trickled down the decades into the fertile and incestuous grassroots music and art scenes that now go some way to defining Glasgow, it was more to do with the way Gordon so charmingly fluffed her lines. So instead of saying 'this year', the words “this weird” came out. Once she checked herself, she followed up by initially announcing the award for the 2016 Prize instead of 2015. While Gordon laughed off these glitches with unflustered cool, once she announced Assemble as winners, both goofs couldn't have sounded more appropriate. Even with the Turner's chequer
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.