Writing Britain

The British Library's current paid-for exhibition is Writing Britain, and I finally managed to get over to see it this weekend - less than a fortnight before it closes.

I'm so glad I managed to squeeze it in, because it's a theme that really resonates with me the relationships of between place and writer, reader and location. It's also full of absolutely wonderful things - they have a "top items" hit list that's so jam packed, even things like Jane Austen's manuscript of Persuasion don't make the cut!

There are some beautiful combinations presented - George MacDonald's The Gray Wolf paired with a 12th century illuminated manuscript depicting Scottish wolves and romantic depictions of Tintern Abbey illustrating Wordsworth's letter describing his pleasure in writing there. Fay Godwin's photos are such a deliriously perfect match for the Ted Hughes poems they're intertwined with, it was glorious to see some of them in large scale prints.

The 1400 book telling the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Night is something magical to anyone with an interest in folk tales or the Aurthurian myths.

Also magical for me were the manuscripts and editing proofs revealing the hidden process of the writing - one that struck me was Seamus Heaney's proof edits on a poem in his Station Island, which he almost entirely re-writes on the page (which I'm sure thrilled his editor, but being able to see where he tightened the phrasing, re-set the beats... wonderful stuff!)

The exhibition also makes us of the Library's extensive audio collections - it's well worth taking the time to put on the headphones and listen, especially to the poets reading their own work - John Betjeman reading Metropolitan Railway was an especial treat, and the location right next to St Pancras magnified the effect nicely.

London does loom large in the exhibition as a whole - not only is there a whole section of the exhibition dedicated to depictions of London (Kureshi's MS of Buddha of Suburbia! Neil Gaiman's Sweeney Todd!. Angela Carter's MS of Wise Children!) but almost all the "suburbia" section is Greater London, and there are plentiful mentions elsewhere - such as Victorian sci-fi After London and Ballard's post-apocalyptic London in Drowned World in the "Wilderness" section (although I'm not 100% sure I didn't see that same pairing in the BL's sci-fi exhibition) Beautiful as art, as much as their writing connection, Steadman's illustration of the white rabbit as a suburban commuter fretting about missing his train, and the poster of The Napoleon of Notting Hill also stand out.

The exhibition runs until Sept 25th - £10 adult, £5 for students - and if you can't make it, the accompanying book is also a treat (and is in the LUP Library, if any of my students are reading)

Lunch hour location appreciation

One of the many advantages of the London Centre's location is that I can nip out to go to a 50 minute long tour at the National Gallery, pop across the road for a sandwich and be back at my desk inside an hour.

Which is what I just did - thank you to Alan Crookham, National Gallery Archivist, for a fantastic architectural tour, delivered as part of the London Festival of Architecture. I wish we could have been allowed downstairs to peek at the 70s rooms in their 70s splendour, but that's absolutely the only thing I could criticise about it.)

Likewise, yesterday I popped over to the Mall Galleries for their 50 years of London architecture exhibition in my lunch break, which was fascinating. Not so much for the big public projects, many of which were fairly familiar, but for the domestic ones. Who would have thought that the much maligned late seventies would have produced so many beautiful, functional homes!

Interesting for me, to, seeing so many local things - there's a strong showing from east London, including two schools that I'm more familiar with from hearing about the Building Schools for the Future project, my local cinema, the station I go through and the bridge I cross over to get to my *other* local cinema... Plus all the Olympic Park plans, of course.

Stunning photography two, to showcase the work, including this one for the footbridge joining the Royal Ballet School with the Royal Opera House, which I have long admired, but never knew was called the 'Bridge of Aspiration', which is just so perfect for it.

The exhibition closes on Sunday, so if you get a chance, do drop in soon.

I am an agent

This past Thursday I was over at the Wellcome for another of their 'Exchanges at the Frontier' series. (They're being broadcast on the World Service on Wednesdays through December & available on iplayer).

This time was Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer of the SETI institute, who was a very entertaining speaker indeed, and he and A.C. Grayling get a great many points for their very gracious handling of the crazier audience questions. Their events are always interesting, and this was no exception.

I also managed to get there in time to take a look around their new Identity exhibition. In brief: highly recommended - go if you can.

I keep thinking I'll have time to write an actual review, but reality suggests that I won't, so here's the Londonist one, which I think covers the ground well. It's impressing me with how different they make the usual exhibition space feel from theme to theme. As an ex classicist and ex lit student, one of my favourite touches were the ancient mirrors from Freud's collection that were tucked into corners outside the eight 'rooms' - something so evocative about them and their provenance.

* Photo by lady Vic, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

What's that shadow on the wall

Friday Late : Animate @ the VandA - that was a whole lot of fun.

Partly the truly excellent company, to be fair, but also a good part because the VandA know's what they're doing. The Shadow Monster's interactive doobrie just didn't stop being *cool* every time we looped back past it, the show reels were suitable impressive, and while the filmed stop-motion collaborations were a bit too audience-participatory for me, I did make a flip book, and collaborated on a zeotrope.

But mostly it was just pleasing to me to spend time with friends in this amazing building (the re-opened Poynter Room cafe is still just beautiful) surrounded by music and people and shiny things. The atmosphere is totally different to visiting the museum at any other time. I think it is the music - a really crowded day would probably be as loud, but the music being played gives the sound shape. That and the fact that everyone's there for the same thing, even if they're doing different parts of it.

The next one's on the 27th. Ritual.

Another map of your head

I spent part of Friday evening mooching around the National Portrait Gallery, using it's late night opening to pass the time before my evening's engagement.

The Pet Shop Boys mini-show that was on its last weekend was a bit uninspiring, being mostly very well known shots, but elsewhere in the contemporary galleries there were several new-to-me pieces that I was very taken with (and I always love visiting Andrew Motion's Head - it's so tactile.) As is so typically me, the portrait of Johnson Beharry, which I really liked, isn't on their site, so I can't follow up the reference to a related painting I now can't remember any of the details about (something about a cavalry officer?)

Up on the first floor, you're immediately faced by a wall of Jim Dine's self-portraits - I have to admit I was very taken by a pair, one very dark black and red, full of anger, and then next to it, an etched silver-under-black version that somehow reminded me of ancient gods. The Exceptional Youth set, both sides of one bay of the curved dividers, also grabbed me - beautiful images, but also very narrative, somehow.

Rounding the corner from that first floor gallery I was forcibly reminded how much I love how the NPG uses it's space to orient you - the clean, contemporary, late 20th / 21st century new acquisitions, all curved beech and glass, and then you turn a corner and it's ox-blood walls, gold frames, and Victorians ... The dotty glass dividers in the earlier 20thC gallery pleases me also - and the current focus on women writers was fascinating - so many familiar names and so few familiar faces.

But the hands-down winner for me was Nick Danziger's Blair at War series, which manage to be both documentary, aesthetic, and powerfully moving. There's one shot that could be the image of a dispossessed leader - TB to one side, being made up for the cameras, while the foreground is filled with his staff and advisers, deep in confab. Put next to the shot of TB and Bush, chatting casually on the terrace at Camp David, deciding the course of the war, though, it's just the opposite.

And then I spent Saturday afternoon with a friend braving the closing weekend crowds for the London: A Life In Maps exhibition at the BL. All those reviews when it opened that said it was brilliant? They were quite right, but it's too late now. There were an awful lot of people, and as the maps all pretty much demanded you to get up close and personal to spot road names and landmarks, there were some traffic snarls, but pleasingly, the kind of people who seem to want to spend a chunk of their weekend getting their geek on about the evolution of London place names also seem to be quite friendly and happy to point things out / have things pointed out to them.

It was striking how unrecognisable so much of the pre-Wren city is, not helped by the centre point of many of the maps being Southwark Cathedral / London Bridge, which on a modern map are over to the east. And disconcerting how, in the early maps, you can see the back of London - the point to the North where the houses end. I know it's facing the other way, but I couldn't help remember standing in front of Alexandra Palace on fireworks night last year and seeing the city stretch south into the horizon...

We were going to follow up with a trip to The Building Centre, but we lost track of time both in the exhibition and over coffee, so they were shut by the time we got over there. Another day.

Sometimes it's hard / It's hard to tell

I nipped over to the Proud Gallery in my lunch break today, to take a look at their new exhibition : The Sims Life Stories : The Art of the Teen Dilemma.



It was just about worth fifteen minutes of my day, and it wouldn't have been if I'd got rained on on the walk over there. It's glorified advertising, and I've come to expect better of Proud Galleries, who normally do a fabulous job of blending the aesthetic and the commercial.



Maybe I'm being unfair.



By juxtaposing screencaps of the new Sims with blown up images from girl's magazines from the last fifty years, they're clearly not going for the aesthetically engaging, more the sociological angle, but even so it's just not as interesting as they seem to think it is.



The problem is that it's not *hard* to find photo-stories and comic strips in which teenage girls (1) are shown being insecure and obsessed with boys and make-up and what their BFF really thinks of them, so what does the exhibition think it's saying? The more things change the more they stay the same? Maybe. Probably.



But the heavy dollop of branding doesn't lead you to question or conclude or react to that, it just says 'and now we can do the stilted poses and predictable dialogue without needing to photograph models.' which leaves me with a overwhelming feeling of 'and?'



The press release is peppered with words like 'legendary'
'unprecedented', 'cumulation of the evolution of storytelling'. It's
really not helping me be impressed.



When you think of the actually kind of nifty things people do with the Sims, this exhibition just seems like even more of a let down. (Having Depeche Mode re-record a song in Simlish? Good advertising-meets-art, IMO. This? not so much.)



On the plus side, it's only a two week exhibition, so it'll be over soon.





(1) In fact - that's part of why I found it more infuriating than anything else - they're conflating 'teenager' with 'girl' - at a guess because the Sims is a 'girl game'? (I wouldn't know - I'm more of a Rez / GTA girl m'self) Even when they've picked a comic or photo-story about boys, it's actually about the girl he stood up to work on his boat, or the girl he fancies but can't talk to, or the lass who's been holding an exaggerated cheesecake pose in her bikini for the last couple of hours while, unbeknownst to her, he draws her...





Technorati Tags: galleries and museums

there's wall to wall empty cans

So, last Thursday, whilst the wind was bringing down the entire transport system, I hoofed it up Tottenham Court Road to listen to Kevin Warwick talk about the Brave New World of cybernetics, courtesy of the Engineers Club (1).

I have to confess that the lecture proper was a bit of a disappointment – it confirmed that he is an accomplished self publicist, but he resolutely failed to go anywhere near the ethical issues which he'd put in his lecture title (2) which got a bit frustrating. From the questions, I wasn't the only one who noticed that.

But the event was held at the Building Centre Trust, which gave me the opportunity to explore their current exhibitions. The New London Architecture model of the greater city of London, with all the planned projects in place really is something. I live pretty close by some of the 2012 Olympic schemes and I've seen some of the plans, but there's nothing like the 3D scale model of the whole city to put into context just how much is going to change and, potentially, how much my borough and its neighbours could benefit from the games.

The Places for People Public City exhibition focused in on some of those projects, as well as some that have been completed and others that may never get realised, which was, if anything, more interesting. Architecture brought down to a very human scale, and some of it truly beautiful. The accompanying books isn't bad either, although I really wanted more text, more discussion, more words - but that's just how I'm wired.

I'm planning to wander back up that way in a month or so to see what their upcoming Sustainable London exhibition has to offer.

~~~

(1)(This is largely a networking opportunity for engineers, but as I am not an engineer, and neither is the friend who invited me to the lecture, I can only conclude that they are admirably open minded.)
(2) (Upgrading Humans – Technical Realities and New Morals)

Sweet singing of the choir

Nothing much to report : between the end of the semester and the festive preparations I've mostly been being boringly busy.

Well,except that on Tuesday I went *ice skating* with a bunch of friends outside the *Natural History Museum* and it was *cold* and had *pretty lights* and *carol singers* and I did remember how to skate, and it felt properly like *Christmas*, and just about the only thing that would have made it better would have been if they'd suspended a pterodactyl skeleton over the ice rink.

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge

J and I spent Sunday taking advantage of Somerset House's Free Days to go and poke about in the Courtauld and to see the Byzantium exhibition in the Hermitage Rooms - I still get a real kick out of seeing pots which I have written about in the flesh ;)

Greatly enjoyed the Byzantium set, but, while I was wowed by some of the pieces in the Courthauld, I remain slightly boggled that they can charge what they do, when there's so many other paintings by the same artists elsewhere in London. The Kandinsky's were interesting, though, so I might have to wander down to the Tate Modern at some point to see more.

There was dance stuff of variable quality going on in the courtyard, though, some of which was really fun. Just the fact they'd organised a whole weekend where these government buildings are opened up so kids can go and play in the fountains (they even had a drying tent set up) is a good thing in my book.

Sushi and sitting in the park was a really nice way of finishing off the day, before we walked home down the river to test drive my new shoes.

On days like these when skies are blue

Today has been a good day, sitting in Embankment Gardens with friends and sushi for a leisurely picnic, and then wandering up-river to wander around the Tate Modern (cubism and futurism gallery this time) before heading down to Tower Bridge and home.

And I am walking in London

Yesterday I walked around half of central London in search of my friend H and Tag: a combination of my assumption it was at Sadler's Wells, when it's actually at the Peacock, and my brain insisting the LSE was really over by IALS, which it's just not. But hey – I got to go walking!

TAG - me vs the city – I am toying with the idea of writing an email to the creator, so I may post more in the future, but in brief: wow. Physically stunning, and beautifully choreographed. Amazing – and well used – set and did I mention the sheer virtuoso skill of the dancers? But a nagging feeling throughout that I was missing things – about the piece, about the dance, about the music – I suspect some of the words I didn't get were names? I'm very glad I saw it, but I'm not 100% sure yet what my reaction is, if that makes sense. The post show talk was interesting, and very interactive, but I still don't think I've processed my reaction.

*****

Today - meeting up with a friend, C, who is over from Washington, along with his brother and a friend of the brother's. St Paul's for the best approach to Tate Modern – and it's freezing out there, but such a cold clear night the moon above St Paul's was just breath taking, and you could actually see stars from the middle of the millennium bridge. Wandered around the Tate Modern, before heading down river a little for dinner, thanks to the gallery's positively civilised opening hours – the giant white cube installation is *fun* - it's crying out to be touched and climbed, whatever the signs say, and impressive in person in a way the pictures I've seen totally failed to bring across (a bit like the Big Red Thing which is still my favourite ever use of that space)

The Poetry and Dreams gallery had some beautiful pieces and some that, did nothing for me. Hits for me included a Fini! Unfortunately hung a little high, IMO, as it's such a dark, detailed piece. I'm made even more happy because I stopped and was captured by the picture before I saw who it was by. There's a little tiny Henry Moore that I wanted to pick up and touch, Dadaville, which is incredibly tactile, and I thought for a second, something by Cathy De Monchaux, which was actually this piece by Trevelyan. I'm trying to remember if I've ever heard her cite him as an influence. Tucked away in a corner room is a whole bank of archive boxes, by Susan Hiller, which juxtapose fragments and photocopies, collections and creations, casually slipping in realities and periods under the cloak of the brief evocative prose of a catalogue record. I could spend a lot of time in there plotting narratives to thread the pieces together.

up at windows filled with light

I was walking across the Square in the freezing cold this morning, and they've finished putting up the Christmas tree and were backing up the cherry picker to start stringing the lights.

In the absence of any even slightly fantastic public lights this year, I find myself noticing the shop displays. My friend and I wandered around west London last night, and took in some of the Christmas windows - Harrods' didn't really stick, but Harvey Nicks are sort of 70's steampunk robots and the like - random, but cool. And here, have Londonist's write up of the Selfridges set. I'm still pretending hard that it's not less than a month till Christmas, but starting to feel it anyway - I do love this time of year, I just never have enough *time* to do everything I'd like.

*****

The weekend's been a good one, with a visit from a friend from out of town. We wandered around the Natural History Museum, discovering whole new species of mammal(1) and realising just how many species (ones I have heard of) look like they belong in a fantasy novel instead of the real world (2) and then the whales(3), which are still mind-blowingly big, and then a final detour in to the dinosaurs, to see the new animatronic T-rex. No small children were maimed or eaten. Although possibly one or two were traumatised.

We also signed ourselves up for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Darwin Centre, aka millions and millions and millions of Things In Jars : giant glass jars with unhappy looking head-fist eagles, or three squished echidnas, or four foot lengths of soft coral..... The lady showing us around was really chatty and informative too, which more than made up for the fact that the giant squid was in a giant box and not available for viewing.

We roamed West London in search of non-expensive coffee for a while (and accidentally wandered into Hotel Chocolate which was delicious but not coffee) before we decamped back to central London for dinner at Ed's, and a visit to Foyles, and then, finally, back home, where we chatted until the early hours.

All very good indeed.

(1) (Pink Fairy Armadillo! They really exist!)
(2) (anything which is basically animal x on stilts, for starters. And lemmings, who would clearly be fighting on Aslan's team.)
(3) (nothing like a stuffed elephant to put your whale in context.)