A Research Trip to London - Day III

I set off bright and early to try to cram as much as possible into my last day in London. I took the tube to Vauxhall with Morrissey on my mind and walked past the imposing and hideous MI6 building on my way to Tate Britain. I got there just after nine and then found out that it opens at ten!



So I had an hour to kill in a really dreary part of London. I wandered around for a while, looking for somewhere to grab a coffee and a newspaper but there really was nothing around. Eventually I stumbled across a depressing cafe situated at the bottom of a depressing tower block and got a coffee and a croissant.



I find these concrete and steel towers to be really depressing on a grey, drizzly day, yet they can look so beautiful against a blue sky with the sun glinting of the windows. With an hour killed I headed back to the Tate and went inside. I wasn't sure what to expect as I usually go to the Tate Modern but I feel I have seen everything there a few too many times now.

On the ground floor there was a massive exhibition of Ian Hamilton Finlay. I must say I was underwhelmed by the majority of it, although some of the large 3D type installations were quite interesting. I moved swiftly on through a huge room filled with classic British art. John Martin's massive apocalyptic scenes were really impressive and I stood staring at them for quite some time:



He must have been a fun guy to chat to at parties. I then wandered through a section of twentieth century painting and sculpture and was really impressed by this piece of classic Gilbert & George:



Seemed so strange that they had walked past me on Brick Lane the day before. I also really liked seeing the infamous "George the Cunt and Gilbert the Shit":



Another artist whose work I have always admired is Patrick Caulfield, so it was great to see some of his stuff full-size. I particularly like this piece and wonder if I might try to do something similar, combining photography and 3D/vector graphics:



I was feeling pretty inspired by this point, and generally impressed with everything I saw at the Tate. And then there was this:



This is Barry Flanagan's "Pile 3 '68". Pile of wank more like. How the crap does stuff like this get put on display in a gallery? I think it actually takes the piss more than Emin's "Shitted Bed" or Carl Andre's bricks. Apparently these "expressive cloth sculptures were a vehicle for investigating the behaviour of three-dimensional form, free from traditional notions of sculpture".

This proves that in art you can get away with pretty much anything providing you write a bunch of nonsensical bollocks to justify it. Perhaps I am just not cultured enough to "get it". Wank. Luckily my faith in art was restored when I walked into the next room and discovered a brilliant artist I had not heard of before.



This is Leadenhall Market by William Roberts. He made this in 1913 when he was just 17. I love the constructivist style and the muted tone of this piece in particular. It has a draughtsman-like quality that I really love. There were loads of other pieces by him in the large room, but I found that his work got less interesting as he got older.

I had a lot to cram into my final day, so it was time to move on. On the way out I walked down this beautifully painted staircase:



Next I headed to Euston and the Wellcome Collection to see "Death: A Self-Portrait"; a macabre collection of artworks and artefacts related to death that was being advertised all over London. There was some interesting stuff but I think I was most impressed with how the exhibition was curated and advertised. The information leaflet that accompanied the exhibition was designed to look like an order of service for a funeral. Nice attention to detail.



Morbid curiosity drew me to this exhibition, as I am sure it did many others, but death and mortality are things that occupy my mind a lot of the time so I probably would have benefited more from some distraction. There was a "nice" piece of infographics on the way out though, which showed causes of death in the twentieth century:



For a bit of light relief I headed upstairs to see the "Medicine Man" exhibition, which contained, among other ghastly things, a wide selection of authentic torture chairs and amputation saws. The Japanese in particular seem to have taken torture very seriously. All this death was making me hungry, so I headed for Soho to try a little place called Hummus Bros on Wardour Street.



I can highly recommend this place. The food was great and pretty cheap and the pittas were so fresh and hot from the oven. The main dish was a ring of gorgeous home-made hummus with a spicy beef stew in the middle. Different and totally delicious. After this wonderful feast, I made my way to the Barbican to have a look at the Rain Room. The Barbican was a bit of a pain to get to but it was worth it if only to enjoy the beauty of the building itself - it's like a 1960s Dutch airport!



There was a queue for the Rain Room but luckily it stretched nowhere near as far as the sign which stated "approximate queuing time from this point is 2 hours". I had walked in from the pissing rain to queue to walk through a Rain Room! I only had to wait about 15 minutes before I was ushered through a long, dark, curving corridor, I could hear the rain around the corner, which was strange, and the shadows of people on the walls looked haunting. Upon rounding the corner I reached the Rain Room itself. Basically it's a bunch of camera/sensors on the ceiling coupled to a bunch of sprinklers. When you walk underneath a sensor the associated sprinkler turns off, so you should remain dry. In theory.



The staff were only allowing a handful of people in at a time, otherwise I guess all the sprinklers would switch off, ruining the effect. Of course the group before me seemed to stand there fannying around forever. Yes, the rain stops as you walk through - get over it! Before I was allowed in, someone informed that I might want to take my black coat off as the sensors would not pick me up and I would get a soaking. Unfortunately I was wearing only a black shirt beneath it, so I kept my coat on and headed in. And got soaked! I managed to stay dry for a while by standing next to other, more brightly-attired people, although I soon got bored and made a dash for it. I must say that this indoor rain was very wet.

As I left the Barbican it was starting to get dark and I was aware that I only had a few hours before catching my train home. I still wanted to check out the Saatchi Gallery so I hopped on a tube to Sloane Square. I wandered around this ultra-posh area for quite some time without finding the gallery. Eventually I asked someone if I was in the right neck of the woods and they told me that I was stood outside where the Saatchi Gallery used to be. Apple's maps app strikes again. I was now getting really short on time so I headed off in the right direction and found the place at last:



I didn't really have the time for a leisurely stroll about the place, so I dashed around a collection of suitably depressing Russian photography, much of which seemed to consist of massive prints of naked tramps with hideously diseased cocks. Lovely. When I went back downstairs to the cloakroom to get my backpack, I noticed the distinct smell of sump oil. Of course! I almost forgot that this is where Richard Wilson's 20:50 was situated; something I had wanted to see for a long time. It didn't disappoint and I was lucky enough to be alone in the room, looking down at the beautifully-reflective void and contemplating death (again). It is a bit of a shame that some arseholes feel the need to drop things into it, spoiling the perfection of the surface.



And that was about it. I headed straight for Paddington just in time to catch my train home. This had been a really useful three days, hence these immense blog posts. I saw loads of great stuff and some shit, like the pile of blankets. Oh and there were these horrendous Christmas lights on Oxford Street:



Marmite? Really? If you are going to sell Christmas to the highest bidder then at least pick something that is at least relevant to the season. Perhaps Cadburys? Or Smirnoff? Heck, even Bernard Matthews! At least Carnaby Street and Chinatown made more of an effort:

A Research Trip to London - Day II

I set off early in the morning to continue my inspirational tour of London. I arranged to meet a friend for breakfast in painfully fashionable Shoreditch as I wanted to check out KK Outlet and White Cube in Hoxton Square, as well as Whitechapel Gallery and Brick Lane in general. I took the tube to Old Street and was instantly struck by a series of really simple posters that were all over the station:



These were all the way down the stairwells, on both sides, and there were massive A0 versions in other parts of the station. What could it mean? The payoff came in the shape of another bunch of posters, all stating "WEAR SNEAKERS". But it didn't end there. The two messages were united on a further set of posters, along with the Converse logo. What a brilliant ad campaign. Must have cost them a fortune. I really like when a campaign has been designed for a specific location.

It didn't take more than thirty seconds from stepping off the train before I spotted my first hipster:



Within minutes I had spotted my second:



By the time I left the station they were everywhere, like an ironic-jumper-and-facial-hair zombie horde. Still, they are harmless enough. I met my friend as planned and we walked along to Hoxton Square in Shoreditch, where we grabbed a bite and a cuppa at The Breakfast Club. Everyone was painfully fashionable but pleasant enough and there was this rather brilliant He-Man wallpaper in the toilets:



After eating we headed around the corner to White Cube, where there was an exhibition by Harland Miller called "The Next Life's On Me". It's a really nice space and the paintings were like huge paperback book covers (I think Miller is also a writer).



Next, we walked across the square to check out the KK Outlet store.



I thought the place was just a shop, albeit one chock full of beautiful independent publications, but it turns out it is also a gallery. There was a rather brilliant exhibition on called "Logo R.I.P." which was basically a series of photos of gravestones featuring well-known logos that are sadly no longer with us.



After KK Outlet my friend and I went our separate ways - he headed off to work and I strolled down Brick Lane in search of the best "best curry in London". While I was looking at one of the £6.95 two-course lunch menus, I noticed a couple of dapper gentlemen walk right past me:



It was only Gilbert and fucking George! I dashed after them to get this cheeky snap. I was more than a little starstruck when I finally sat down to eat. After lunch I walked all the way down Brick Lane until I reached the Whitechapel Gallery. I was interested in seeing Mel Bochner's typographic work, as well as the general collection in the gallery.



Bochner's brightly coloured word chain images were quite nice but nothing really special and I did quite like posters made from shaving foam sculptures that were beautifully lit and photographed, something I must try at some point, but the rest of the stuff in the gallery was pretty boring and/or pretentious art wank.



That was enough art for the day, so I went and met my cousin on Oxford St and then went for a few early-evening drinks around Soho. Once we were a bit wobbly we hooked up with some other friends and walked through loads of interesting back streets until we arrived at a fantastic pop-up burger joint in Covent Garden:



We then headed back to Clapham, stopping for a last drink at a very fancy bar where they charged me £11 for two pints of ale - it was only £3.50 a pint just off Oxford Street! Still, they did have a lovely Jeff Koons print on the wall, which sort of made up for it (a bit):



More tomorrow...

A Research Trip to London - Day I

I decided that before the big push at the end of the third year, perhaps some creative inspiration was in order. So, at the end of November 2012 I packed my bags and headed off to London to see what all the fuss was about. Luckily I was able to doss on my cousin's floor in Clapham, which kept costs to a minimum.

First thing I did was head for Oxford Circus and then a short stroll to The Photographers' Gallery.



Once inside this impressive building I headed for the Tom Wood exhibition on the second floor. Wood's work reminded me a lot of what Martin Parr does, photos of (sub?) working-class people in their natural habitat, that could easily be seen as somewhat exploitative. I think that Wood's stuff is more interesting than Parr's, and he has been doing it a lot longer too. Some of his shots I found especially funny, powerful or moving:



Three Wise Women



Not Miss New Brighton

Afterwards, I went upstairs and paid two quid to see the exhibit entitled "Shoot! Existential Photography". Most of the exhibition was taken up by photos of famous people at shooting galleries back when they were popular at fairgrounds. I like this one of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre:



There were a few other interesting pieces, involving cameras that were set up to capture the very moment they were struck by a bullet. But the really emotive piece for me was a room of sixty or so prints of the same Dutch woman, Ria van Dijk, taken one-a-year over the course of her life. These shooting galleries at fairgrounds in Europe used to have a camera built in - the prize for hitting the target was a photo of yourself having just fired the winning shot. Ria van Dijk started collecting these photos at the age of 16; she is now 92 and still doing it! The only gaps are from during the war years. I found it very powerful seeing this woman age as I walked around the room. In some she has hardly changed whereas in others she looks quite different. Did she have a bad year? And how much of a toll did the war take on her? Is it discernible in her features? I love stuff that makes me think about life and death.



I left The Photographers' Gallery and grabbed a bite at a great Buddhist eatery in Soho before heading for the Cartier-Bresson exhibition at Somerset House. "Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour" in fact only featured 10 of the great man's works (all black & white), alongside 75 full-colour works from photographers who "measured up to Cartier-Bresson’s essential requirement that content and form were in perfect balance."

I was really blown away by some of the work I saw; not just the quality of the photography but also the scale of the images and the exotic processes and materials onto which they were printed (aluminium sheet?). Here are a few of the ones that really impressed me:



Karl Baden had a series of mundane images all shot from his car window. The body of the car frames the shots consistently and the over-saturated colours give them all an otherworldly feel.



I love this shot by Saul Leiter. None of his photos simply capture a scene or an event, they are more expressive in themselves and I definitely consider this to be photography as art. Beautiful.



Carolyn Drake's work is I suppose documentary, although they are always really crisp and colourful in a way that makes them appear hyper-real.



This shot that Boris Savelev took in Moscow has a real "decisive moment" thing going on. I don't know why this composition works so well, it just does. If only I could take shots like this...



This is a very surreal image by Melanie Einzig. It was of course a very surreal event but the way the UPS guy seems oblivious is just really powerful. Is he oblivious or is he a consummate professional? "UPS delivers. No matter what."



I really love the street photography of Joel Meyerowitz. There's something about the colour and lighting in this shot that makes it look like it could have been from Mad Men. I actually think it is far more recent than that, but I will look into it further.



Another of Meyerowitz's shots. I am not sure whether this is staged or in fact another example of "decisive moment" photography. I hope it is the latter but why is that important to me?



This is the work of Trente Park. Again, it's a rather surreal image in which a man is puking in the street. It looks almost like a religious experience at first glance. I love the over-saturated colours which really add to the piece.



This photo by Fred Herzog makes me nostalgic for a time and place that I have never been to. And I am sure life was not exactly peachy for the people in the shot either, particularly the black folks.



Another great shot by Herzog that really invites you in and makes you want to know the stories of the people in the scene. Has the guy cut himself shaving? Did he also injure his hand in the process? The old woman's expression is fantastic. Love this shot.



This shot by Harry Gruyaert looks like a painting. The colours and composition really blew me away. You really need to see it full-size in a gallery to appreciate it fully.



This is a beautiful portrait of Gene Kelly by Ernst Haas. And I don't just like it because Kelly is one of my all-time heroes, although I am sure that plays a part.



I am not sure if this surreal shot by Alex Webb is a piece of collage or a single shot. Looks to me like someone surfing down a river!

Wow, this is becoming a huge blog post and I am only just at the end of the first day of my three-day trip. I think I will pick this up again tomorrow...