Three-and-a-half days in London
23 hours flying from Australia to spend three days in London before heading to Berlin. It really was a flying visit, but I managed to cram a lot in to a few days.
Ai Weiwei installation in the courtyard at the Royal Academy
I’ve never visited London for more than a few days, and each time I discover new things I like, and always wish I was there longer. One down side is the hideous expensiveness of it. The last couple of times I was there the Aussie dollar was much stronger, this time I really felt the pain paying for food and accommodation. I also discovered that many train stations are not wheelchair accessible which is really worth knowing when you are lugging 30kgs of luggage – obviously not as much of a pain for me as it must be for people in wheelchairs who simply can’t use those stations. After the long-haul flight and transiting through Paddington and Kings Cross stations, arriving at Highbury/Islington to face carrying my luggage up many stairs was daunting.
Fortunately, a lovely bloke cheerfully lugged my case up the stairs for me. In fact, the entire time I was in the UK I crossed paths with cheerful, helpful people, including a bloke who chased after me to return a dropped glove, my air bnb host who made me coffee and gave me printer access to print a flight boarding pass, and all the lovely folk who served me mostly terrible coffee. The worst coffee I have ever encountered was served to me at the British Museum.
Highlights of day one were catching up with the excellent Shawné Holloway and being introduced to the also-excellent Kimmo Modig – who fed us green smoothies and took us on an adventure walking tour of Hackney. We had good food and coffee in a café called Larder, an excellent pub meal at the Windsor and stumbled across the very charming Klub Trop where we drank wine and mead.
Klub Trop with dog in residence greeting guests
It was snowing when I woke up - just a little, but enough to be a novelty for someone that hasn’t seen snow in a couple of years.
On the second day it was time to trek across town to Rotherhithe and hear an artist talk by another Finnish artist Otto Bystrom - this was held at small independent gallery Jupiter Woods.
It’s great to get away from the big institutions and discover what’s going on in small spaces. The double bonus of this afternoon was hearing about an artist run initiative Sorbus Gallery in Finland at the same time. The format of the event was to have a talk by the visiting artist, then share a meal. It was great to have the opportunity to talk informally afterwards and have some quite lively conversation among the 12 or so people there. Jupiter Woods was collaborating with Sorbus in Helsinki working out an exchange project – great to see small artist run initiatives organising their own international collaborations and building exciting artists networks outside of an institutional framework.
Breakfast at Dishoom! I love this place, inspired by the Iranian cafés of Bombay – this café has the most delicious chai and excellent breakfasts. I could sit there all day enjoying the atmosphere as much as the food.
Then on to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was very crowded, but there were rooms that were less populated and I enjoyed visiting some favourite objects and spaces, as well as discovering new curiosities.
This is the smallest tapestry in the tapestry room. There are objects from the middle ages and a gorgeous Arts and Crafts William Morris piece - every one is stunning, but this one is my favourite. I think it’s the smaller scale and the modesty of the little unicorn as well as the wonderful detail of the flowers.
It was made in Belgium in approx 1500 and it is thought that it may be a fragment from a larger work.
Apparently this dress is so wide in order to be able to display a wide area of elaborate decoration. The shape enables the wearer to go sideways through doorways while still presenting an enormous canvas on which to display their exquisite taste. This is a court dress from 1740-50s England.
And speaking of extravagance...
The Norfolk House music room is delightfully indulgent.
I couldn’t resist a selfie in this one, though my facial expression is a bit zombie-like - I put the weird stare-face down to jet-lag.
A quick drop-in to the British Museum ended my very brief cultural tour of London. The BM had gem of a show right up the very back of the building Drawing in Silver and Gold presenting metal-point drawings from Leonardo to Jasper Johns. I was surprised and amused to see one of the works in the show by Peter Sebastian Graham had been drawn using a stylus made from James Mollison’s melted-down gold watch.
I have mixed feelings about museum visits. The BM has a spectacular collection and I really enjoyed seeing many artefacts from ancient Britain. The overwhelming feeling when looking at most of the objects was that I was looking at stolen loot – Egyptian mummies, ancient middle-eastern artefacts – pirated treasures from all over the globe. As a privileged person of European descent I look at the way museums and galleries construct their histories and tell their stories, and I feel deeply uneasy. I have a similar feeling about the V&A but I guess to a lesser extent as this time I was mostly looking at European objects which don't convey the same sense of having been robbed from graves and temples.
I was interested to read this morning a review in the Guardian about the current exhibition at the National Museum of Australia that addresses some of these issues in relation to Aboriginal objects collected by the BM.
After such a short time in London - next stop - Berlin...