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Sunday, 25 November 2012
Hirst, BZF, German Market, Ma Famille and a bit of Beat Streuli .(scribbled at 23:15 )
Another post on
escaping London for a weekend. How original (!).
Perhaps it’s the thought of being able to spend a week’s
annual leave by eating my bodyweight in Toblerone, or maybe something to do
with drinking mulled wine with every meal,
but I am really looking forward to Christmas this year.
It’s not all Pogues and cable knit tights though, I am
really looking forward to catching up with la famille. I saw my grandma this
weekend which was immensely cool. As someone who doesn’t even know what Pilates
actually is, I find it incredible that my 85 year old granny regularly
practices yoga. Being back home has really put me into the festive spirit, I
even found myself buying a garish jumper
worthy-of-colin-firth-in-bridget-jones-diary. Alas, no reindeer motif, but the
pattern’s growing on me:
It’s really great to be back home, although I’m beginning to
feel I may have been pre-empting the Christmas spirit a little too much with the 5 mince pies and glass
bottle of Merlot I had last night. Oh dear.
Moving swiftly on...
I always regret missing major exhibitions, and I guess that
can mostly be put down to working full time and not enough galleries having a
weekly late opening (Cough. Serpentine Gallery. Cough), it’s pretty hard to see
everything and I’m finally beginning to realise that in my old age.
What I
really like about the Artist Rooms series
though, is that each display runs for several months at a time, and it brings
major works to institutions that otherwise wouldn’t usually have the capacity
to hold a retrospective of their work. Ed Ruscha at Wolverhampton Art Gallery
last year quite literally blew my mind, as did Martin Creed at Tate Liverpool.
For those who had no intention of battling against the
masses queuing for the Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern this Summer, I do
wholeheartedly recommend you take a trip to the New Art Gallery Walsall to see
his Artist Rooms series there. With a running time until February next year,
you’ve got no excuse. Of course, there is only a small selection of his works
from the collection, but they’re a pretty damn good selection at that. You’re
not going to come across The Physical
Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, or a room full of
butterflies flapping around your face. But that said, you also won’t come
across a crowd of people actually shoving
one another out the way so they can get up close and personal with Away From the Flock. And that’s quite an
incredible feat in itself, being able to see his works that
close and not feel an impending sense of claustrophobia as twenty tourists
instagram that sheep’s head to (its second) death. I actually made three trips to the Hirst show at Tate,
just because there was only so much I could take of its crammed gallery spaces
before I felt my legs dragging me back to the 141 bus stop at London Bridge.
But I guess seeing an exhibition in intervals is pretty cool.
The Artist Rooms display
at Walsall sits alongside its pretty impressive permanent collection too. Since
seeing the Bronze exhibition at the
Royal Academy last week, I’ve felt myself appreciating the Epstein bronze
sculptures more than ever. Legendary artists Bob and Roberta Smith also have a
room containing their Epstein archive; a fairly small space that pays homage
to the Garman-Epstein family.
The gallery was also host to this year’s Art Book and Zine
Fair, hosted by the Birmingham Zine Festival crew on Saturday. As well as numerous stalls
selling adorable tote bags and quirky one off jewellery pieces, there were
quite a few nice limited editions on sale there too. And masses of art books… I had my eye on a swanky Tony Arefin catalogue
but somehow managed to restrain myself. Which I think is pretty impressive,
considering that my level of resistance when buying art books is somewhat on a
par with my resistance when faced with a box of mince pies.
I did, however buy THREE works by collage
extraordinaire Mr Moltonium:
I'm afraid my poorly taken quick photograph from 5 minutes ago does not do them justice, but adding to my current collection of Moltonium collages, “Human Kebab”, “Seeing What is Not There”, and “It’s
like a Fuckin’ Aviary in ‘Ere” are
pretty damn well put together, and will result in an inevitable trip to Habitat
for frames (like I needed an excuse to go there anyway). Although finding a
frame suitable may be a wee bit tricky… I’m still in the process of mounting Snakeob, which was made this Summer.
I’ll post a photograph when I’m done.
Today was ever so slightly more hectic, with visits to Ikon
Gallery to catch the Beat Streuli exhibition that opened this week, as well as
an evening at the German market catching up with one of the bezzies. Overpriced
Haribo aside, they really do have some tasty stuff going on down there. I’ve
fallen a little for mulled toffee apple cider, and have undoubtedly eaten my
month’s quota of garlic bread. I’d rather not think about the calories consumed
within the past 48 hours, but to add to all of this gorging, it’s my brother’s
birthday today so I ended up pigging out on a
lot of chocolate cake:
and eum... even more cake was devoured this afternoon in Alexi K's studio. I honestly have no idea how my stomach can handle all of this! I had a sneaky peek at his current projects, as well as one of his older triptychs. Assez impressive, ouaih?
Like most weekends spent with family, they were also filled
with a considerable amount of time gorming at window displays and taking immature
photographs with my younger sister:
I
can’t quite believe how quickly the weekend has flown by now that I’m once
again in the grey streets of Finsbury Park. By some sheer miracle, I’m actually
only in London for the next 7 hours before I drive off to the countryside for a
week of working in the middle of nowhere. Well… I’ll be spending my nights at a hotel
that’s a stone’s throw away from Salisbury cathedral, so it's not exactly roughing it in a tent with a
flock of sheep but you get the picture…
ARTIST ROOMS: Damien Hirst continues at New Art Gallery Walsall until 26 October 2013
Labels: Alexi K, ART DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE, Artist Rooms, Ikon Gallery, Moltonium, Walsall Art Gallery, Zine Fair
