Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I wanted to get a post out on actual Halloween this year instead of waiting til Wednesday, but that means it’s going to mainly be a picture post of two spooky(ish) events I attended recently: Halloween at Chiswick House, and Mexico at Kew Gardens. Halloween at Chiswick House appeared to be aimed mainly at families, but I’m quite used to being the only person/couple without kids at these sorts of things, so I didn’t really care. And it was actually surprisingly spooky, though not actually scary (no one jumping out at you or anything), hence the child-friendliness. The light installations were done by the same people who do Christmas at Kew, so they were very high quality, and I loved the experience (and my spooky Halloween waffle), though I do wish the signage outside had been better, as it took us quite a while to find the correct entrance gate.

We also went to Mexico at Kew Gardens, which was an installation based mainly in the Temperate House that ran through October. Since Day of the Dead is this week, I thought I might as well post a few photos from that too. My favourite things were definitely the sloths, but the giant ofrenda was also pretty cool – it contained photos of famous people who had died since Covid (but not necessarily of Covid) – the juxtaposition of the Queen and Meat Loaf made me chuckle, and I loved the adorable skeleton pan de muerto. It was also nice seeing some of the autumn colour in the gardens, especially on the bonsai (so cute!), though I was very disappointed in the cakes from the café, which were dry and overpriced. Still a nice day overall though!

Hope you all have a very spooky Halloween! 🎃🎃🎃🎃

London: “Executions” @ Museum of London Docklands

I’ve been waiting for this exhibition for a loooonnnnngggg time – it was originally scheduled for October 2020, then obviously Covid happened – but as luck would have it, it finally opened just in time for Halloween 2022. Because let’s face it, as much as I love ghosts and monsters and all things folkloric and supernatural, there’s nothing quite so scary as actual historical events, especially horrific state-sanctioned ones. Those of a more delicate disposition can at least take comfort in the fact that once English methods of execution became standardised in the early modern period, although none of them were particularly pleasant ways to die, at least we weren’t using some of the even more brutal methods that were popular on the Continent (if you are curious about those, I recommend checking out The Faithful Executioner, which is a fascinating book, but I read it once and that was enough. It is fairly nightmare-inducing).

Because I was so excited about seeing this exhibition, I booked tickets as soon as they were released at the start of August, which I realised upon arriving was definitely not necessary, as there were only about five other visitors in the whole exhibit (which I’m certainly not complaining about). “Executions” runs until the 16th of April, so you’ve got plenty of time to see it if you’re not a keen bean early booker like me. Admission is £15 or £7.50 with Art Pass.

 

Most special exhibitions at the Museum of London Docklands are free (as are the permanent collections), so I was expecting quite a lot for my admission fee, and as you’ll see, I think the museum delivered. I think the last (and first) time I saw a paid exhibition here was about fourteen years ago, shortly after I moved to the UK. It was on Jack the Ripper, and it was really excellently done, so much so that I’ve thought of it often in the years since, and this exhibition felt poised to be more of the same from the atmospheric configuration of their galleries. Normally their free exhibitions are confined to one half of their gallery space, but for this they’d opened the entire gallery and built various walls and other scenery to guide us through the exhibition on a journey that felt like we were heading to be executed ourselves, or at least to be spectators at an execution, which really was an excellently creepy effect.

Apart from the opening section, which talked about the different methods of execution in England in some detail (the most horrible by far was boiling, though only a handful of people suffered this fate – Henry VIII, lover of cruel and unusual punishments, made this the punishment for poisoners during his reign, but his son Edward VI rescinded it as soon as he took the throne), I wouldn’t say this was a particularly graphic exhibition – it dealt more with how the justice system worked, the people who were being executed, and the role executions played in society at large – so you’d probably be ok seeing this even if you’re a little bit squeamish. I was initially most excited to see some of the artefacts that I knew would be on display here, like the shirt and gloves that Charles I allegedly wore to his execution (though the museum pointed out that this cannot be verified, only that the clothing is from the correct time period and sufficiently sumptuous to have belonged to royalty), and the bell that was rung before every execution at Newgate (below), but I ended up getting sucked into the atmosphere of the exhibition and just enjoying the progression.

 

“Executions” primarily focused on the early modern period through to the mid-19th century, when public executions were banned, so much of the time period they covered was during the infamous Georgian “Bloody Code” when over 200 offences, most of them relatively minor, were punishable by death. Because of this, many of the people being executed were highly sympathetic figures – there were lots of poor people found guilty of petty theft who were just trying to make ends meet – which made reading their stories even sadder. Due to so many people being condemned to death in this era, reprieves were also fairly common (though not common enough); like so much else in life, they were mainly a result of a person being well-connected or at least able to get a decent number of signatures on their petition, and the results of their petitions would be announced to everyone in the condemned cell at any given time, which seems especially cruel. Those whose petitions failed would have to watch the lucky few rejoicing; or, in one case where thirty-eight women were reprieved but two men were condemned to hang, the lucky majority.

 

We walked through all the stages a prisoner would have gone through leading up to their execution (which in the Georgian period often took place only two days after their trial, so they didn’t have much time to prepare their souls), from their sentencing, failed petitions, last letters to their families, final church service (where they were forced to stare at a coffin to contemplate their soon-to-be fate, though I highly doubt they needed a reminder), to their chains being removed and replaced with a cord pinioning their arms in place, leaving their hands free to pray (this was later replaced by a belt that held everything down, as leaving a prisoner’s arms free led to some unpleasant struggles with the executioner on the scaffold), and finally the last cart-ride to the gallows. The “execution room”, which I was honestly dreading a little bit after the build-up (dreading in the sense that the gloomy environs had me thinking I might actually be walking towards my death), was very immersive, containing a grass and dirt floor, the sounds of women singing a ballad that would have been sung by the crowds at executions, and screens showing little animations of people on the scaffold reading out their last words. Apparently they worked with a dialogue coach to make sure the last words were spoken with accents that would have been found in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, and those were some interesting accents, which was maybe not the part I was meant to be focusing on, but fascinating nonetheless.

Once we’d managed to survive our time on the scaffold, we passed into a room containing broadsheets about some of the more notorious criminals, which I spent quite a bit of time reading. These were usually printed the night before the executions, which meant they were often inaccurate, including the very much invented “last words” of the person being executed, and since last minute reprieves were quite common (so last minute in one case that the man had already been hanging for five minutes when it got there, so had to be hastily cut down and revived. Fortunately, this was in the days of short drop hangings, when it could take up to twenty minutes to die, because if it was a long drop hanging, it would have been much too late for the poor man), sometimes broadsheets were made describing an execution that never even happened! I also loved (if that’s the right word), the sketches done of the faces of dissected criminals, which described their crime and the results of the post-mortem in very neat handwriting.

The exhibition continued with talking about the toll executions took not only on the condemned themselves (obviously), but on the people who were left behind, and included stories of grieving family members, the love tokens prisoners made to give to their friends and families, and the memento mori the bereaved created. It also spoke about the way ordinary people would have been affected simply by walking through London, which would have had many grisly adornments in the 17th and 18th centuries, like heads on spikes, bodies on gibbets, and sometimes even quartered limbs sticking up from the tops of bridges and buildings, which can’t have been a pleasant sight. “Executions” concluded on a slightly more positive note by discussing how the increase in transportation led to a decrease in executions, followed by the end of public executions, and finally the end of the death penalty altogether (in the UK at least).

 

In case you couldn’t tell, despite the grim and grisly subject matter (or knowing me, maybe because of it), I absolutely adored this exhibition. It was so interesting, and I hope I’m not doing it a disservice by lumping it in with spooky season, because even though it certainly was creepy, it was also quite affecting and highly informative. Highly recommend seeing this one if you have a chance! 4.5./5.

 

 

London: Superbloom @ the Tower of London

Superbloom: come for the slide, stay for the flowers. I don’t think that’s actually their tagline, but it should be! The Tower of London seems to like to decorate its (dry) moat for various occasions, like the famous poppies a few years back to mark the centenary of WWI, and this year, it’s planted the moat with real flowers to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. I care very little about the Queen, but I do like slides, which, as you may have guessed, is what sold me on this. Yes, there is an actual super happy fun slide that anyone who goes to Superbloom can have a go on, and that is why I agreed to pay £10 to see this. I suppose flowers are nice too, but all I could think was, “slide, slide, slide”. It’s sad that as adults we don’t get many chances to go on slides, so I take advantage where I can!

I am happy to report that the slide did not disappoint (it was very fast indeed and actually made me feel a little sick, but in a good way, like a roller coaster), and indeed, neither did the flowers. Though at first glance I was admittedly a little underwhelmed by what appeared to be mainly wildflowers (I guess I was expecting something a bit more groomed, like the Keukenhof), there’s just so many of them and they wrap pretty much all the way around the Tower, with different areas set up with different types of flowers, a soundscape, and even some sculptures. It runs until September, so I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you don’t mind a slightly touristy day in London – and if you live in London, you’ll probably already have seen the Tower at some point, so you can just buy the cheapo Superbloom only tickets like we did and skip seeing inside the Tower altogether (nothing against it, it’s just expensive). But in case you won’t find yourself in London before then, here’s some photos so you can get a feeling of the experience. And sorry for the short post after disappearing for a bit – just haven’t massively felt like blogging lately between some shit going on at work with my contract (I may or may not be leaving in August, tbd in the next couple of weeks), unusually bad seasonal allergies that have left me feeling pretty run down (not Covid, I’ve been testing), and, you know, the general terrible state of the world at the moment, but wanted to show you this one while it is still, well, blooming.

The slide! It definitely looks a lot higher and scarier when you’re at the top, as the screaming children I saw on it could probably attest to.

 

London: “Inspiring Walt Disney” @ the Wallace Collection

Let me preface this by stating that I am not a big Disney person. OK, I do still love Disney’s Robin Hood and the songs from The Little Mermaid, and I did go to Disneyland Paris like ten years ago when we got a cheap deal on a day pass in January and I rode Phantom Manor about twenty times in a row because the weather was terrible and there were no queues, but I’m not one of those adults who still watch every Disney movie and take all of their vacations at Disneyworld with special themed outfits for each day and decorate their houses with Disney merchandise. You know the ones (I certainly know the ones, since I’m basically describing someone I went to high school with who seems to always be popping up in my Facebook feed with Disney crap). I liked the films when I was a kid, but most of them just don’t hold up well when you watch them as an adult, in my opinion. My point in saying all this is that I wasn’t inclined to like this exhibition just based on the Disney connection – they were actually going to have to work to impress me!

“Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts” runs until October and costs £14 (£7 with Art Pass). I booked in advance because that seemed to be the thing to do, but when we got there, the exhibition was almost completely empty. (The rest of the Wallace Collection, which is free to enter, was fairly crowded.) The man at the desk handed us each an audio guide, and we were off. I know I’ve set myself up as a Disney cynic in the opening paragraph, but I have to admit that I was tickled right at the start when the audio guide turned out to have a surprise guest narrator who was none other than Angela Lansbury, aka Mrs. Potts. Fortunately, as far as pacing was concerned, most of it was narrated by someone with a faster speaking voice, so we weren’t standing around all day, which I hate. It was still a bit long-winded in places for my tastes, but at least it was easy to skip around.

Apologies that there’s not photos of everything I would have liked to take a picture of, but we were told conflicting things by different staff members regarding photography, so we were only able to photograph some of the exhibition. Anyway, in 1935, Walt Disney travelled to Europe with his brother Roy and their wives, in part to source ideas for future films, and whilst there he fell in love with French castles and 18th century French decorative arts. And because the Wallace Collection’s, er, collection features French decorative arts (amongst many other things), this exhibition contained objects from their collection that may have inspired Disney’s animators, particularly when they were making Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, which were the main focus here, since they both feature inanimate objects coming to life and are both set in roughly the same historical era (not that Disney is exactly known for its historical accuracy).

Fortunately, apart from the two films I mentioned at the start, Beauty and the Beast is probably the Disney film I’m most familiar with. I was 6 when it came out, which I think is a pretty ideal age for Disney, and I could relate to Belle because she had brown hair and loved reading, just like me, so I watched it a lot, even though the part where they put Belle’s father in the caged madhouse cart thing freaked me out. So I loved the sketches showing how the drawings of each anthropomorphic character evolved. Mrs. Potts was particularly cute – she was originally wearing a tartan tea cosy, but they changed her to be a more elegant fine china. The original Cogsworth was shit scary though. You can see him on the Wallace Collection’s website if you scroll down.

Of the French decorative art pieces on display here, the best were probably the pair of Sevres vases pictured above (which were on loan from American museums, so weren’t even part of the Wallace Collection), which were made to look like adorable castles, and inspired many Disney castles, but there was also furniture (some with animal feet, which may have been what inspired Disney to give life to inanimate objects in the first place), clocks and candlesticks (aka Cogsworth and Lumiere) and paintings.

Apparently, The Swing by Fragonard, which is the painting above left, was a particular favourite of Disney animators, and appeared in a number of different guises, from a flashback scene in Beauty and the Beast showing Belle’s childhood, to a background painting in Frozen. I’ve watched Frozen exactly once and was distinctly underwhelmed, so I hadn’t noticed it (and I haven’t seen Beauty and the Beast since I was 13 and spent a summer babysitting a little girl who was OBSESSED with it, so don’t particularly remember it in that either), but I suppose it is interesting the way they hide these “Easter eggs” in different films.

I feel like my general lack of enthusiasm for Disney is probably making it sound like I didn’t enjoy this very much, but the opposite is actually the case. After dealing with crowds at most London museums, the fact that we were practically the only visitors was a delight, and I really enjoyed looking at some of the original sketches and the objects from the Wallace’s collections. Disney fans would love the “behind the scenes” look, I think, and the decorative art pieces made it appealing to even cranky people like me. 3.5/5.

London: Fashioning Masculinities @ the V&A

The V&A recently starting opening seven days a week again (since Covid, they’d only been open Wednesday-Sunday), and since my preferred day for museuming is Tuesday, I was keen to pay them a visit (I hadn’t been since seeing Faberge in November). The Beatrix Potter exhibition was fully booked on the day I wanted to go, so I ended up booking “Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear” instead. Most fashion exhibitions are geared more towards women’s clothing, and though obviously I love ogling fashions I would actually want to wear, I was intrigued to see an exhibition of men’s fashions for a change, particularly as the theme of the exhibition was exploring concepts of masculinity and gender through fashion.

The exhibition cost £20 (£10 with Art Pass) which seemed a little steep for the smallish gallery they normally have fashion exhibitions in, so I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived and discovered it was actually in the Sainsbury Gallery, their fancy newish underground exhibition space. I was somewhat dismayed when a large group of fashion students arrived at the same time as us (even if they hadn’t been wearing their student badges, I would have been able to tell from the fleekness of their eyebrows. Do kids even still say on fleek?), thinking it would be very crowded, but the spaces are so large and open it was actually not bad at all inside, and we were easily able to navigate the exhibition without having to queue.

The museum warned that there would be nudity in this exhibition, and they weren’t shy about jumping into it right from the start, with various photographs of nude men, clothing featuring penises, and a video of a naked man gyrating around (not that any of this was a problem for me). The first room of the exhibition was focused mainly on contemporary designers and some of their gender bending designs, such as skirts and shapewear for men. It also talked a bit about homosexuality in the mid-late 20th century and the way the gay community played with popular conceptions of masculinity.

After the first room, the exhibition focused more on men’s fashions throughout history, starting with the early modern period and progressing through to the 20th century, along with modern styles influenced by historical fashion. Needless to say, I generally preferred the historical fashions – those giant ridiculous shoes certainly aren’t doing that pink outfit any favours.

This segment of the exhibition was focused primarily on the role of colour in men’s fashions prior to the 19th century, when things took a turn for the drab. This was largely due to the invention of industrial dyes – before that, most dyes were made from natural materials, which could be expensive to make, so wearing brightly coloured clothing signified wealth (by the time the Victorians rolled around, this was no longer the case, so the upper classes could live out all their goth desires and still flaunt their wealth). For example, there was a fad for the colour yellow, which in China was only permitted to be worn by the emperor and his family, but when it became popular in the West, they quickly developed a version for the export market (which was still out of the reach of the lower classes).

Though I loved the colourful clothes, I also loved the 19th century part of the exhibition, which contained a massive wall of drab black suits and explained how the shape of the suit evolved over the course of the Victorian era. I’m not a tailor, so I don’t exactly understand how all this works, but what I got from the interpretation panels was that men’s coats were originally laboriously constructed from many different pieces of fabric, but as they started to become mass produced, tailors developed a way to reduce the number of pieces of fabric used by carrying the weight of the bottom part of the coat in the waistband. This allowed them to develop longer “skirts” on the coats, which invariably became narrower, as that was seen as a more masculine silhouette (and honestly, I love a long slim-fitting coat, and would totally wear some of the ones on display).

I also loved the 20th century part of the exhibition, which featured a display of tuxedos, including one worn by Marlene Dietrich (I’m embarrassed to tell you how much I paid for a pair of woolen Marlene Dietrich inspired suit trousers with matching waistcoat, but I get compliments every time I wear them, so maybe it was worth it); a display of photographs of mods taken in the ’60s, and the Edward VIII inspired trend for fair isle knits. (I know the man was a Nazi sympathizer, but I absolutely love that portrait of him with the dog, and I’m not going to turn down a fair isle jumper either.)

The denouement of the exhibition was a room containing a few dresses that were all famously worn by men, including Harry Styles. This seemed a fitting end – through showing us examples of fashion throughout history that don’t fit into the narrow constructs of modern masculinity (as defined by the more conservative elements of society), the whole exhibition seemed to be leading us to the conclusion that masculinity can be defined however you want it to be, and anyone can wear any clothing they like, though in the real world, obviously some people are still going to have prejudices, and this is probably easier said than done if you don’t happen to live in a big city or liberal area (based on the reactions I used to get to my unusual hairstyles in my youth, including one man who told me I should be dragged into the street and shot for having a blue mohawk). All this being said, I ended up enjoying this exhibition much more than I thought I would, given the focus on menswear. There were some great outfits here accompanied by good interpretation, the latter of which seems increasingly rare these days. It runs until November, so you’ve got plenty of time to go and see it if you find yourself in London. 4/5.

 

London: Surrealism Beyond Borders & Australia 1992 @ Tate Modern

This was the first outing I’d been on since getting Covid (other than work, but that doesn’t count as an outing), and I didn’t want anything too taxing, so the Tate Modern, which is relatively easy for me to get to, seemed like a safe bet. I often think I don’t like surrealism, but really what I don’t like is abstract art – surreal art that still looks like something, even if that something is weird, is ok by me, and Surrealism Beyond Borders, which runs until 29 August, looked particularly interesting because it included lesser-known artists from around the world, instead of focusing solely on the most famous surrealists. Admission was £18, or £9 with Art Pass, and we were able to book tickets the morning of our visit (this was a snap decision on the last nice day in March before the weather turned horrible again).

 

Unlike the Lubaina Himid exhibition, with its disappointingly patchy signage, this exhibition actually did go into quite a lot of detail about the history of surrealism and the way the movement spread around the world. It was started in Paris by a group of artists in 1924 as a way to “subvert the everyday”, challenge tradition, and explore dreams and the unconscious mind. Surrealism was often collective, as seen by the “exquisite corpse” drawings on display here where one artist would start a drawing, fold over the paper so only the bottom of the drawing could be seen, and pass it along to the next artist who would draw their own image, etc. etc. (I remember doing this as a kid, but we definitely didn’t call them exquisite corpse drawings). Because surrealism had a revolutionary aspect, it also caught on in former colonial countries agitating for political change. Although surrealists were anti-colonialism, because we’re talking about the ’20s and ’30s, they did have a gross tendency to interpret the traditional art of many indigenous peoples as surrealist without understanding the meaning behind it, which this exhibition also discussed.

 I’m glad that all this signage was there, because I love a bit of context, but of course I was mainly there for the art, and there was some good stuff. Although there were of course pieces by famous Western artists here, including Dali and Magritte, there was also a decent amount of art from around the world, including a whole room of Caribbean art, and the two pieces above, which I loved. The one on the left was by Japanese artist Koga Harue, and the one on the right was by a Mexican artist (whose name I sadly don’t remember – the label was on a different wall and I didn’t get a photo of it) and shows traditional objects associated with Dia De Los Muertos, including calabacitas, pan de muertos, and a prayer candle. There’s quite a few more pieces here I’d like to show you, but I don’t have all that much commentary (and I’ll be on holiday the week before this goes out, so I’m rushing a bit to get it finished before I leave, to be completely honest), so I’ll switch into photo/caption mode for a bit to save you having to slog through a load of unnecessary text.

Papa Lauco and Ogou Feray by Hector Hyppolite

Exquisite corpse drawings by Frida Kahlo and Lucienne Bloch

Time Transfixed by Rene Magritte

Enrico Baj’s Ultracorpo in Svizzera, loosely inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though that bridge monster looks quite chill.

Scylla by Ithell Colquhoun

Naissance by Laurent Marcel Salinas

This was part of a triptych by Remedios Varo. All three were there, but this was my favourite, I suppose because the man on the bike looks like the prince in the Lonely Goatherd puppet show in The Sound of Music.

Nus by Samir Rafi shows women fleeing a creepy post-apocalyptic landscape

I’m including Francoise Sullivan’s performance piece Dance in the Snow mainly for the shallow reason that I love her snow dancing outfit.

And finally, Victor Brauner’s slightly creepy Nous sommes trahis

I could honestly show you way more, but I think I’ve made you scroll down enough. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed this exhibition, and recommend seeing it in person if you can, not least to see all the black and white photos that didn’t photograph particularly well on my phone. 4/5.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention A Year in Art: Australia 1992, a free exhibition located on the same floor as Surrealism Beyond Borders. The exhibition is inspired by the 1992 High Court Ruling in favour of Edward Koiki Mabo, who was of Torres Strait Islander ancestry and was trying to reclaim his hereditary land (sadly, this came five months after Mabo died from cancer, but it does mean he was able to be buried on what is once again his own land). Prior to this, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands in Australia were dubbed terra nullius, meaning land belonging to no one (because apparently indigenous people aren’t people), thus making them up for grabs to white Australian settlers. It is appalling to think that this practice went on until the 1990s.

 

Because it was free, I wasn’t expecting this exhibition to be as large as it was, but it filled one huge gallery space and a few smaller rooms, and included art made using ancient Aboroginal techniques as well as more modern pieces. I particularly loved the works by Gordon Bennett, including Possession Island (above right) based on a painting glorifying Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia, and How to Cross the Void, a series of often darkly humorous etchings criticising Australian culture, one of which can be seen above left.

 

Other works here included Up in the Sky, a photographic series by Tracey Moffatt that references the trauma experienced by the “stolen generations”, i.e. Aboriginal babies who were forcibly taken from their families and raised in white Christian missions; Judy Watson’s a preponderance of aboriginal blood, which is a series of reproductions of government documents showing the discrimination against people of Aboriginal descent that was enshrined in the Australian legal system through the 1960s, including denying indigenous peoples the right to vote; and Helen Johnson’s Bad Debt, pictured above left, which references the construction of Canberra on Aboriginal lands and the non-indigenous animal species introduced by Europeans that have had a devastating effect on native species (there’s obviously an analogy being made there). I’m glad we stumbled on this exhibition, because it was absolutely fascinating. It’s there until the end of September, so go see it if you can!

London: Port City @ Museum of London Docklands

I will take any excuse to go to Museum of London Docklands because it is only a short DLR ride away from Greenwich Market, home of my beloved Brazilian churros, so when I saw that they had a new exhibition called Port City, I thought, “Churros plus maritime history?! Sign me up!” I normally work on the days the churro stand is there, so I don’t get to visit often, but I had a day of TOIL to use in early March, so I took full advantage and planned to head out east. However, my luck being what it is, there was a Tube strike that day. Fortunately, the DLR was still running so we did manage to get there via a more convoluted route, but because we had to leave for the museum earlier than we were planning due to the longer journey time, I didn’t have time to attire myself in a vintage-inspired nautical outfit, as I otherwise definitely would have. I know, no major loss to the world, but I do like to theme my clothes if possible!

 

Port City is a free exhibition located in Museum of Docklands’ relatively small temporary exhibition space, the same one where I saw the Havering Hoard, Secret Rivers, and many others. It runs until 8 May 2022 (and apparently opened back in October – where have I been?). The exhibition “traces more than 200 years of extraordinary experiences and intense activity on a river that has always been essential to the city’s survival”, though seemed to focus mostly on the 20th century.

 

Obviously, the Thames is a hugely important part of London and probably dear to every Londoner’s heart (certainly my own), but we often don’t think of London still being a major port, not least because we’re inland, but also because most shipping operations these days happen at a “mega port” about thirty miles outside the city, so it was interesting to explore that side of London.

 

My absolute favourite thing in the exhibition, though excessively imperialist by today’s standards, was a map of the world from the perspective of Britain as the centre of the still fairly flourishing empire of the 1920s. I spent about ten minutes examining it on account of the little animals with talk bubbles drawn all over the map, particularly the polar bears. I had just remarked on their being incorrectly located in the South Pole when I noticed one of them had a talk bubble saying, “It’s a long way to Tipperary” and another saying, “This is all wrong! We belong at the North Pole!” Nice.

 

There were some interactive elements to this exhibition, though sadly the ambergris pictured above was not one of them. I excitedly reached my hand in the hole to touch it, only to be blocked by plexiglass that was invisible from the side. However, there were a few boxes filled with authentic smells of the docks, some of them surprisingly pleasant. We were the only people in the exhibition, so I was able to pull my mask down for a bit to give them a good old whiff.

I also loved the wall of nautical inspired phrases and London place names. You could pull out different bricks to read how these terms came to be, and I spent a good long while pulling out all of them. By the way, the horrible sounding Mudchute, a stop on the DLR that I’ve mentioned before, was named after muddy engineering overspill, so it was just as unpleasant as the name implies (I don’t think the overspill is there these days, but I suspect it’s still not particularly nice).

 

Before we went into the museum, Marcus commented that the statue that used to stand out front was no longer there, and neither of us could remember who it was depicting. Turns out it was of the slaver Robert Milligan who helped to create West India Docks, the area the museum is in, which was initially built to house sugar processed by enslaved people in the West Indies, and his statue was understandably removed in 2020. So it was helpful that the exhibition mentioned it and saved us the trouble of looking it up!

Apart from the odd snippet of pertinent facts like that, the exhibition was largely object and image driven, with only small amounts of information on the signage, so although it was quite visually engaging and interactive, I would have liked to see more text. I think it would have been interesting if it focused a bit more on the early history of Docklands, as that was a relatively short section before jumping into more recent history, and I tend to prefer Georgian and Victorian history to the 20th century. Also, though it’s a depressing subject, it might have been nice if they’d included more information on how areas like Canary Wharf have turfed out the poor and been turned into the hideous high-rise monstrosities they are today (I absolutely loathe Canary Wharf and Canada Water, in case you couldn’t tell). However, as it was a free exhibition, I really can’t criticise too much, and being the only people inside was an added and delightful bonus, though for the sake of the museum and the very friendly and enthusiastic staff member who greeted us, I do hope their visitor numbers pick up. 3/5 (the churros, as always, were a solid 5/5).

London: The World of Stonehenge @ the British Museum

“Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell. Where the banshees live and they do live well.” OK, now that I’ve gotten that Spinal Tap song out of my system, which is what pops into my head as soon as anyone mentions Stonehenge, I can talk about my personal experience with Stonehenge. I have been there only once, for summer solstice in 2009. Even though I dabble in witchery, I am not at all the sort of person who is into the Druids or stone circles or any of that crap, nor do I do drugs, so this was an unlikely place for me to be, but it was something Marcus had always wanted to do (even though he is REALLY not into any of the above), and at the time, he was about a month out from having heart surgery and doing some things from his bucket list in case he didn’t make it (but don’t worry, he is totally fine now!) so we drove down with a friend of ours. Now, this was the first summer I had spent in the UK, so in my head I was thinking, “summer solstice, longest day of the year, must be warm, right?” WRONG!

After queuing in traffic for about three hours and walking from the event carpark, which was an insane distance, probably a good two miles, away from the stones, we reached the site and sat down on the grass to watch the sunset, me wearing only jeans, ballet flats, and a light three quarter sleeve jumper. As soon as the sun went down, I was absolutely bloody freezing, and getting increasingly annoyed by the behavior of everyone around me, basically a bunch of hippie/festival types getting drunk and drugged out of their minds and climbing and hanging off the stones in a really inappropriate manner, so Marcus and I walked the two miles back to the car so we could try to get some sleep. Said car was equally freezing and for whatever reason, Marcus didn’t want to turn the heater on, so I spent a completely miserable night shivering to death whilst our much more outgoing friend was by the stones having the time of his life. We finally left the next morning, stopping in a Little Chef so I could use their toilet because the port-a-loos at the ‘Henge were even grosser than a Little Chef toilet (also the only time I’ve ever been to a Little Chef) and I already had a horrendous sore throat, which would develop into the worst cold I’ve ever had in my life. I was sick for about a month, and lost a stone (as in fourteen pounds, not a Stonehenge stone). And that is why I have never been back to Stonehenge.

 

But that terrible experience wasn’t enough to stop me going to see “The world of Stonehenge” at the British Museum, since I wouldn’t even have to leave London for that (also the toilets at the British Museum, whilst not always the cleanest, are still a hell of a lot better than port-a-loos). The exhibition, which runs until 17 July and costs £20, or £10 with Art Pass, is all about the culture of the Neolithic people who created the monument, although since it is prehistory we’re talking about, much of the content is speculation based on the archaeological finds from the area.

 

I’m never going to be the biggest fan of stones, which made up a large percentage of the artefacts here, but I am a fan of sea monsters, like the ones above right, and of the moon and stars, and skeletons, and weird little figurines with removable phalluses, all of which featured here. Unfortunately, photography wasn’t permitted of one of the best objects in the exhibition (though it didn’t stop pretty much everyone in there from taking a photo), the Nebra Sky Disc, which shows the Pleiades and is the oldest surviving star map, but it is the background image in the BM’s exhibition page, so please do click the link in the above paragraph if you’d like to see it.

 

Just as I was surprised by the intricacy of many of the ancient objects on display at the BM’s excellent Peru exhibition, so was I surprised by the craftsmanship of many of the artefacts here, craftsmanship not necessarily (perhaps wrongly) being the first thing you think of when you think of Neolithic people. I mean, an arrowhead is usually just an arrowhead, but the signage described the ones pictured above as “exquisite” and damned if they weren’t. I was also fascinated by the story of Seahenge, which was uncovered on a beach in Norfolk in 1998 after a shrimper found a Bronze Age axe head and a tree stump. Crazy that there was an elaborate prehistoric monument just hiding under the sea for all those centuries.

 

It is incredible to think that people actively used Stonehenge as a revered site for over 1500 years, and that the arrangement of the stones underwent major changes over time, and I’m always up for reading about burial practices, as the site originally served as a cemetery. Although I’m not one to feel the “power” of the stones, anything that old and mysterious is still kind of impressive, and I did love seeing all the objects associated with sun worship. I think I’d pass on actually wearing the ear discs though, which were the size of a chocolate digestive! I used to have stretched ears, although I only went to a 2 gauge, and even that was an incredibly unpleasant process that my ears have never fully snapped back from, so ain’t no way I’m getting those holes biscuit-sized.

I think it’s clear that I was actually fairly impressed by this exhibition, but if I had a complaint (and it’s me, so of course I have to have a complaint), it would be the usual one I’ve had since social distancing stopped being a thing – way too many people. I saw a sign saying that the exhibition was sold out for the day as we went in, which I knew meant trouble, and indeed, it was extremely crowded. I’m not overly concerned about Covid these days, being fully vaccinated and boosted, though I do still wear a mask inside public spaces, it was more the fact that I hate queuing and having to shove my way in to get at look at things, and there was definitely some of that, though the exhibition was fortunately large and spread out enough that I was able to move to less crowded bits for most of it to avoid queuing for long. I still would have enjoyed it much more with fewer people around though! As it is, I’ll give it 3.5/5. Definitely a better experience than visiting Stonehenge itself!

London: Waste Age @ the Design Museum

I’m afraid that this exhibition will have ended by the time this post goes live, but what can I say? Sometimes I’m lazy and don’t get around to visiting things until near the end of their run, especially if they’re things I wasn’t that bothered about seeing in the first place and only went to so I had an excuse to stop at the big Whole Foods and Arancina, which was definitely not the case here…

 

Anyway, Waste Age: What can design do? at the Design Museum was all about consumption, the waste it generates, and what design can do about it, so by its very nature, it was always going to be a little bit depressing. Nobody really wants to hear about how we’re destroying the planet, even if it’s something we need to hear. To really drive home the point, the exhibition opened with a series of photographs taken at dumps and other waste sites around the world, as well as graphs showing how much waste different countries and groups of people generate. Unsurprisingly, it is the middle and upper classes who are responsible for the most waste.

For me, one of the most interesting parts was a timeline illustrating the growth of consumer culture. I hadn’t realised that plastic bags weren’t invented until 1960! I knew a bit about the concept of planned obsolescence (being a weird anarcho-punk as a teenager will do that to you), but also didn’t realise that the Phoebus Cartel, which controlled the lifespan of light bulbs, was set up so early as 1925. The cartel artificially limited the lifespan of light bulbs to 1000 hours, even though early lightbulbs were designed to last for 2500 hours, and many could go for even longer than that. The exhibition had a photo of the oldest continually operating lightbulb, which has been burning in a fire station in California since 1901 and has provided over a million hours of light. Really goes to show how corporations have been screwing the world over for a very long time indeed.

The next section was a bit more positive, as it showcased ways designers are recycling materials that would otherwise be wasted. I was excited to spot the chairs we have in our café at work, which are made from waste from plastic factories and lumber yards. Although I think our chairs are reasonably attractive (they’re the ones stacked at the back of the photo above left), the design of some of the objects here left a lot to be desired. It’s all very well creating sustainable furniture, but if it looks like melted candle wax mixed with poo, like one of the chairs here did, who is going to buy it? Same goes for the rope made of human hair, which is an interesting concept, but I think I would barf if I had to touch it, unless it was my own hair.

 

Also intriguing, if a bit unsettling, was the display about a manky old cottage that some designers had preserved instead of knocking it down and building something new. Whilst I love old houses, and I’m all for preservation, their method was definitely strange, in that they decided to preserve the dust and dead bats inside the house. I love bats, but having dead ones laying around frankly feels like a health hazard, and as someone with dust allergies, I’m pretty sure walking into that place would kill me. Shame, as the fireplace with creepy faces in it is awesome!

Throughout the exhibition, there were examples of these concepts at work, with walls of the different exhibition spaces made of various recycled materials, which again, is all fine and dandy, but one of those walls absolutely stunk; I think it was the one I’m standing in front of in the photo above. It was made of sugar, and I find that sometimes sugar stinks when you open the bag, so I guess it was that smell concentrated, but damn! I could smell it through my mask, and I made Marcus smell it to confirm it wasn’t just me. It was kind of like that episode of One Foot in the Grave where there’s a bad smell by their sideboard.

After walking through a couple other rooms of conceptual products of varying degrees of attractiveness (yes to the dress, no to that stool with all the holes, which is triggering my trypophobia, and I really don’t think that “Bin Burger”, where all the burgers are made from food waste, is likely to take off), we finally reached a cool interactive nature wall that lit up as you walked past it. Not really sure what it had to do with the exhibition, except maybe to show what the world could be if we stop destroying it with waste.

As you might expect from somewhere called the Design Museum, this was very design orientated, and some of it was just too high concept for me, but other products did seem to have a practical use, particularly the ones that were for sale in the gift shop. However, I think a good place to begin, before we start eating garbage burgers and using hair rope, would be to do away with planned obsolescence and increase the lifespan of the normal objects we all use, like computers and small appliances (and to be fair, there were prototypes of laptops and phones in here that could easily be disassembled to install newer hardware as it comes out and thus prolong the life of the device). It gave me some food for thought about the ways we’re destroying the world (though according to the green checklist they had in there, I’m already doing pretty well by not owning a car, recycling, and not eating meat), but as someone who prefers history to futuristic design, this type of exhibition was never going to be my favourite, though obviously I knew that going in, so I don’t really know what I’m complaining about. 3/5.

London: Lubaina Himid @ Tate Modern

I became familiar with Lubaina Himid’s work thanks to the Online Art Exchange, which I take part in every week at work. Basically, museums pick an artwork from another museum off the Art UK website based on a theme that changes weekly and tweet about it, and one week I stumbled upon a painting from Himid’s Le Rodeur series, inspired by the grim story of Le Rodeur, a French slave ship. Nearly everyone went blind in the middle of the voyage (possibly due to severe conjunctivitis), and 36 (or 39, accounts vary) enslaved people were thrown overboard, allegedly to preserve water. Most disturbingly, the captain was subsequently given a second commission to transport slaves, because of the “great job” he did on the first trip. Himid’s paintings show Black people in strange “out of time” nautical settings, to portray the confusion the enslaved people on the voyage would have felt as they were chained in terrible conditions and went blind one after another. Needless to say, her painting became my selection for the week, and I have kept an eye out for her work ever since, so I was definitely intrigued by this exhibition at the Tate Modern.

Intrigued, but not exactly excited, because the description sounded rather pretentious. The term “theatrical exhibition” is ordinarily enough to send me running for the hills, but since Himid genuinely started her career as a theatre designer, that description wasn’t just mere pretentiousness on the part of the Tate. And I did like the Himid paintings I was familiar with, so I thought I’d give it a go, especially because it was the last week for Anicka Yi’s creepy squid robot things in the Turbine Hall, which I also wanted to see. Tickets for Lubaina Himid are £16 or £8 with Art Pass, and it runs until July.

The entire exhibition is inspired by the experience of Black people throughout history, particularly during the years of the British slave trade, and it got off to a good start with Metal Handkerchiefs, nine paintings showing Himid’s version of health and safety guidelines, and Jelly Mould Pavilions for Liverpool, which were a series of ceramic jelly moulds about the relationship between sugar production, slavery, and the development of British cities, which is a really interesting topic, and definitely something on which I would have appreciated more signage. However, if I was looking for decent interpretation, things would only go downhill from here.

The next gallery simply contained a sound piece where people (maybe Himid herself?) said the word “blue” over and over again in different languages, and these art pieces(?) on the wall that looked to be made out of long pieces of cardboard. You can see me looking through the exhibition guide trying to make sense of it all, but it frankly wasn’t much help.

 

The gallery after this was a bit better. It was a series of paintings Himid did in the 1990s about women planning strategies for survival. This was also influenced by the experiences of the people forced aboard slave ships, and was the result of Himid speculating how someone would have survived had they made it to the other side of the Atlantic, in an entirely new environment, with everything they’d ever known ripped away from them.

Next to come was what was definitely my favourite piece of the exhibition, Himid’s reimagining of Hogarth’s Marriage-A-la-Mode, The Toilette. These often hilarious wooden cutouts were a parody of the art world, showing the pretentious art dealers to one side, a Black female artist in the middle, the politics of the 1980s (appropriately) to the right, including Thatcher and the National Front, and a young Black girl observing everything and encouraging the artist to stand up for herself and stop compromising in her work.

To return to the ship theme, the other side of the room had sound effects meant to recall the creaking in the hold of a ship (this was a more successful installation than the “blue” thing), some pieces of wood arranged in a wave formation, and a cart painted with various fish. There was a lot of unused space here, but I guess that was all part of the “theatre”.

The final large room of the exhibition contained a few pieces from the aforementioned Le Rodeur series, some of her Men in Drawers series (literally just paintings of Black men in drawers, as in, drawers from a dresser, not drawers as in underwear), and more carts painted with fairly disgusting looking sea creatures and bugs (I mean, her paintings were good, but the creatures themselves were disgusting).

 

To close the exhibition, the corridor leading to the exit had a final sound piece (this sounded OK too – it was meant to be Himid telling the life stories of 100 African servants, but we did not stick around long enough to hear much of it) and some structure that contained benches under a weird closed off grid. I genuinely wouldn’t have known whether it was an installation or a construction zone had there not been a label next to it, and the label simply had the name of the work, so no real help there (I’ve chosen to show you lemon man instead of the weird bench-thing, because I like it a lot better). There were also some flags inspired by East African Kanga fabrics hanging up, which were quite cool.

I really liked many of the pieces in this exhibition, and I think all of Himid’s concepts had the potential to be fascinating, but unfortunately, the execution didn’t always live up to the premise. The soundscape room with the cardboard on the walls was particularly bad. Most of the rest of the exhibition was better than this, but there was still a lot of under-utilised space, and the price was very high for something we walked through in under twenty minutes. I think this was all due to the lack of interpretation. Big, important topics like this require the viewer to have both a sense of history and an understanding of how these issues are still relevant to the present day, and this just wasn’t here to any significant extent, save for a handful of quotes from Himid in the tiny exhibition guide. Interpretation would have made all the difference here, and bumped up the score quite substantially. 2.5/5 as it is.

Before leaving, we went down to see Anicka Yi’s squid robot things, which were neat, but very freaky. I’m not keen on anything tentacle-y, and the robots got disconcertingly low over our heads. I was convinced one had locked on to me and he was going to swoop down and latch on to my brain if I didn’t keep moving. The Turbine Hall was allegedly scented with various scentscapes, like spices to make us think of the Black Death (don’t ask me what that has to do with squid) but I couldn’t really smell anything through my mask, even though my sense of smell is usually really good regardless. I enjoyed the creepiness in the confines of the Tate Modern, but if I ever see one of those robots squidding down the street at me, I’m running for my life.