Art at Tate Britain and Saatchi

What's the story of these graves?

Yesterday I opted to take the opportunity and free glass of bubbly that the Saatchi kindly offered me on the opening of the 'Body Language' exhibition.
By it's nature the chance to see new works can be a bit of a hit and miss event and I'm sure I will revisit and re-evaluate the works that are on show.

On the way in

The curator gave a short tour and I suppose somewhere there's something of a theme but it's pretty loose (I reckon).
So you may realise that I was less than blown away and was reminded that most of the new is not great for me the works by Henry Taylor had some merit but I found Eddie Martinez's revisiting of the graffiti riff unexceptional (he's no Keith Haring that's for sure) and the naivety of Makiko Kudo was a little overdone.
For me the most enjoyable/intriguing work that I was introduced to was that of the Russian photographer Denis Tarasov - I'm not sure when photograph becomes art (when it's on show in an art gallery I suppose) but this was close to documentary and made me want to know more about the story between the gang warfare that caused so many deaths and so much monumental stone-masonry.

Tate Britain reborn

Now not all new work is technically disappointing, prior to seeing the Body Language show I popped in to Tomma Abts managed to create in her her abstract works (Zebe 2010 being a good example), I also liked Simon Ling's explorations of the real battered architecture of the London I know but wish he hadn't gone down the 'untitled' avenue of not describing his works.

Well Solid

the revamped Tate Britain (I hadn't realised what a great building it is and how oddly it was working recently). The'Painting Now' show is definitely worth a visit I liked the feeling of depth that

Well I'll go to the top of the stairs

But without doubt the revelation for me was the 'trompe l'oeil' of painted works by   Lucy McKenzie, I'm willing to admit that I'm a sucker for technique and tricks when it's performed so well - I only wish that I could get as close to works at Tate as I can at the Saatchi.
Gillian Carnegie was showing some technically strong works too - there was (for a me) a hint of Patrick Caufield in the paintings that had no people in them.
It was good to see that painting is far from dead and that women are playing such a big part in modern painting.