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Monday, 8 April 2013
MUSTARD ON WHITE .(scribbled at 09:00 )


...or hot buttery toast. Either way, this 1963 Lichtenstein work is now adorning my bedroom wall in the form of a 65p postcard. The frame is a bargain I picked up from an Oxfam up in the Midlands when I went home to visit my parents' houses the weekend before last. I do love a bit of museum and gallery memorabilia. From Stedelijk Museum Oyster card holders to pin badges from dOCUMENTA 13, I am literally a walking advertisement for every gallery gift shop out there. It's a bit embarrassing.

Here is just some of the cheesy stuff I picked up from Amsterdam, hahah. (From left to right): Rembrandt-shaped eraser, Rembrandt-figure pencil, Modriaan Cup, Vermeer mug, Vermeer Umbrella. The teabags on the left are pure cinnamon and the package on the right of the Vermeer mug is a gift that my youngest sister crafted for me in her Design Technology lessons. It's pretty adorable actually;  a rather abstract looking metal pendant which is attached to packaging that she made herself (and even made a 'Tate' logo on the back, haha). I wish my classes in secondary school would have been that cool... my lessons didn't extend much beyond learning how to make a net for a cardboard box.




I'm posting this because I'm proud of the enthusiasm I had for hanging my own pictures after 8 hours at work taking frames off walls. I had to trim the mount for Youth With an Ivy Wreath , which I picked up at the Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan exhibition at the National Gallery a few years ago. Yes, that exhibition was all the way back in 2011 and I've only just bothered to dig it out from a cupboard. The other works are all by Ed  (http://mrmoltonium.tumblr.com/) , the top one being a gift and the other two I bought at last year's Zine Fair at the New Art Gallery in Walsall.

So, my sister is studying Pop Art as part of her GCSE in Art, so I offered to have her stop the night in London so she could catch the Lichtenstein retrospective at Tate. Which isn't a huge deal of effort on my part, as the 141 bus stops literally outside my house and goes directly to London Bridge, but it involved a huge deal of effort to not implode each time she referred to Lichtenstein as 'Roy' ...as if they were on first name terms. I mean, if you're friends with Damien, Tracey, Jake & Dinos then refer to them as that by all means. But I'm beginning to get a little angry at the GCSE Art syllabus if its condoning referring to artists by their first name. Arghhh. Thankfully, after 30 hours of me reminding her that Lichtenstein died whilst she was barely a 6 month foetus, I have now taught her the ways (ha.). Regardless of all this, I'm pretty damn flattered that she's chosen to draw me repeatedly for some of her GCSE project work:


It was a pretty crazy couple of days, but I managed to give her an insight into what I find so cool about London in less than 30 hours. Starting off at Shoreditch High street to explore Boxpark and the surrounding shops, we walked down Brick Lane via one of the 24hr bagel shops to grab a few cheese bagels for breakfast. My sister is now hooked to those, and the oreo cupcakes that are sold at the café a few doors down from there. Although my sister wants to be a florist (!), she's also got a thing for Rachel Whiteread, and instantly snapped up one of her Olympics 2012 posters (you know the one with all the circles on?), so I thought it only made sense to walk past Whitechapel Gallery so she could see her sculptural work in the flesh, on the Gallery's façade. 

I'm a little obsessed with Tower Bridge, so we walked over that and then snacked our way through Borough Market up until we reached the Tate Café, where we stopped for a spot of Earl Grey before enduring half an hour in the queue for my sister to collect her ticket. Hardly surprising, but she spent just as long in the gift shop buying Tate publications as she did actually looking at Lichtenstein's paintings. I spotted a book with a Maurizio Cattelan's Untitled (2007) on the cover (a horse stuck in a wall, basically), which is about the various elements that make up the contemporary art world, so I'll pop by next weekend and pick that up. I hate it when you see something you like in a shop, and how you can utterly obsess over it in your head for days/weeks until you get it. I have no willpower or self control with these things. I only lasted 2 weeks obsessing over investing in a high quality bag before I caved in and bought a 14" Cambridge Satchel in their Covent Garden store. I got a 'V' embossed on its front though, so I guess my first born child will have to be called either Violet, Victor or Veronica so I can pass the bag on to them.

 There's this room at Tate where you can arrange your own text and image to create your own Lichtenstein inspired wall piece. It's aimed at anyone under the age of 10 really, but a good 15 minutes was spent there at the beginning of our visit:



I bought this new Penguin Specials book, written by the lovely Alastair Sooke. It's mightily tiny at only 45 pages long, but who can't resist spending money on a brand new paperback?



Admiring a few bits of Bruce Nauman in the Tate's collection:





We walked over Millenium Bridge and marvelled at St. Paul's before heading back to make pizza (from scratch, obvs.) and pig out on cream scones and trashy horror films. Parfait.

I'd taken a day off work the following day, so after a lie in we made time to bake (some of Jus Roll's, ha!) croissant pastry. Sammy and I both filled ours with an entire bar of dark chocolate each, to replicate a more rich take on Pain au Chocolat. You can pick it up from Sainsbury's for under £2, bargain! We'd planned to start our day at the Treasures of the Royal Courts exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, so we hopped on the number 19 bus, which travels on a very architectural-friendly view of London on its way to Knightsbridge. I might start getting this bus to work actually; the views of Westminster would be so beautiful at 7:30am every morning!




Sammy's croissants were to die for!

Freshly squeezed orange juice as part of the David Bowie Is exhibition.

After checking out the Tudors and Stuarts exhibition at the V&A and a few quick gift shop purchases, we hopped over to Harrods for our mid-morning patisserie fix. Sammy opted for a delicious glittery glazed doughnut, which lost most of its icing in the bag, unfortunately:


I on the other hand, had my heart set on making a lego building of chocolate and scoffing it all. These are adorable and admittedly, a little overpriced, so I couldn't afford to build/scoff anything larger than a 2 bedroom semi.


The rest of the Easter weekend was mainly spent eating a ridiculous amount of desserts and buying lots of new homeware things from H&M, like this new duvet cover (I feel middle aged for getting excited about new bedding...) but I did make time for baking a batch of Slutty Brownies. These are so easy to make, and theoretically it is cheating as the ingredients don't extend much beyond a few packets of Betty Crocker cake mix, but they are worth baking if you haven't already! The recipe is from Rose, who writes for my favourite blog; The Londoner. Her posts are quite literally beautiful. I was a little short on time to take proper recipe photographs, but these should give you the gist of how wonderfully moreish they are:





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Wednesday, 31 October 2012
CLOTM: October .(scribbled at 22:10 )

Happy Hallowe'en everyone!

As I sit here devouring my fourth helping of pumpkin pie on this chilly October eve', perhaps it's time to inject a little productivity into an evening wasted spent watching reruns of Black Books with copius amounts of Horlicks. I was about to type that Paul Hollywood would be particularly proud of this pie sans soggy bottom, but then that really would make me middle aged.


Anyway, I'm currently pondering over this as a potential chair lust. Or maybe I just like the idea of it, and am just really craving a Panton instead...


I first found out about Aria in the Time Out magazine that was thrusted into my palm as I stumbled into Finsbury Park station at quarter to 8 on Tuesday morning. Like many other chic home furnishing shops, this is based in Islington and sells the usual stashes of Alessi products and kitchenware by designer Maria Holmer Dahlgren. The Him and Her Glossy Chair by Fabio Novembre for Casamania weighs in at an astonishing £924 for a simple white finish. But you do have the choice of opting for a male or female finish with Novembre's take on the old Panton classic. Yes, for the very same price, you can sit in a pair of incredibly muscular buttocks. Tempting?

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Saturday, 1 September 2012
Chocolate Custard Morning Cake .(scribbled at 13:47 )

Easily won over by a  quirky café lightbulb, me.


Yet again, last Saturday was another of my many days passing the hours in South Kensington. After fruitlessly searching with my mother for a vaguely affordable yet still chic café in Knightsbridge, we wandered over to South Kensington. At moments like this I would race to the V&A to hoover up whatever cake they'd baked that morning, but en route we decided to try out Cocomaya, which is just on the Brompton road.

Chocolate Custard Morning Cake
Okay, so being the peasant that I am, and frankly, quite tight when it comes to buying coffee (I find it hard to part with 99p for a filter coffee from Pret!) I was a little cautious at first. But actually, the prices were really reasonable considering its location. Cocomaya is incredibly stylish too, everything from the classic wooden furniture scheme to the poster in the ladies' loos. I've decided that if the career in Art & Design doesn't go to plan over the next few years, then I really want to open somewhere like this in Neuilly Sur Seine!

Also Delicious: This dark chocolate infused liqueur from Harrods.
Yours for only a fiver!
The food is actually incredible too, whilst my mother opted for a safe lemon sponge, I was induced by the glittering 'Chocolate Custard Morning Cake', which was just.. NOM (nom nom!). Teamed with their creamy hot chocolate, it was actually like eating a wee bit of heaven as the rich custard fused with the impeccable cakey base. I am totally going there again, so I was delighted to find that there are actually four Cocomayas based across that part of the West end.

My poor attempt at a fruit flan the following evening.
So yes, I guess splurging a fair chunk of this month's pay cheque on my new favourite Fine Chocolatier and Artisan bakery is just rather inevitable...


www.cocomaya.co.uk


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Saturday, 18 August 2012
AW 2012: just add berries. .(scribbled at 00:05 )

With September just peeping around the corner, I ended up doodling and collaging in my Archie Grand journal to create a rather huge moodboard of Autumnal design for AW2012. It's a working process (I'll upload an image once it's complete)- but fundamentally a palette of burgundy and berry shades are totally dominating the long months ahead. 

That, and the Baroque motif that recurred frequently with Dolce and Gabbana's AW2012 designs:

If this doesn't have suitability for a PV at the National Gallery, then nothing does.
Unlike other trends about to previously have hit the high streets of Blighty, there's an abundance of ways to interpret this look and it still retains wearability. For one, shades of berry are much more flattering in terms of make up than SS2012's pastel hues ever were (powder yellow eyeshadow, were they taking the p*ss?). LANCOME have achieved an antidote to all the mints and lavender you could wish for with their new range of L'Absolu Nu lipstick, I'm really lusting for this brilliant berry shade entitled 'Rouge Mousseline'. It also happens that my mother is popping by for a visit next weekend, so hopefully in addition to the usual food package (haha...) there may also be a cosmetic or two to devour...

AW2012 Collage in progress:
my  laptop also happens to be a fetching shade of burgundy...

I've already made a bit of sartorial effort with this trend, having picked up a vintage  Laura Ashley shirt in a dashing shade of red wine last time I went back home to visit my parents. Another attempt, was a dozen red velvet cakes, courtesy of the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook:


Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe 
Recipe Courtesy of the beautiful Hummingbird Bakers.
Makes 12 (muffin sized!) cupcakes

Ingredients:
-60g unsalted butter at room temperature
-150g caster sugar
-1 Egg
-10g Cocoa Butter
-20ml unnatural red food colouring (go for a liquid one)
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
-120ml buttermilk
-150g plain flour
-1/2 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
-1 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar

Cream Cheese Frosting:
-300g sifted icing sugar
-50g unsalted butter at room temperature
-125g cold cream cheese

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees/gas mark 3
2. Put the butter and sugar and beat using an electric whilst until light and fluffy. One this is done, beat the egg in slowly.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, red food colouring and vanilla extract to make a thick dark paste. Add this to the butter mixture, making sure that EVERY SINGLE BIT OF RED FOOD COLOURING HAS BEEN MIXED IN.
4. Slowly pour in half of the buttermilk, and beat this until well mixed. Add half the flour and beat again. Repeat this process until both ingredients have been blended in smoothly.
5. Add the salt, bicarb of soda and vinegar and beat on a high speed for a remaining few minutes.
6. Spoon this all into your cakes cases, so that they're around 2/3 full. They should take between 20-25 minutes in the over, and will all be quite springy once complete (do the skewer test as necessary)

After these have cooked and whilst they're cooling on a wire rack, prepare the cream cheese frosting:

7. Beat the icing sugar and butter together with an electric mix until everything forms well together. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat again until fully incorporated. Continue beating until light and fluffy, but take care not to over beat.
8. Spoon onto your cupcakes.

NB: Do not leave out the vinegar. I was pretty tempted to leave it out as I felt far too lazy to buy a whole bottle of white wine vinegar, until someone I work with told me they'd turn out pretty naff if I did that. She's an amazing baker so I did wisely to go with her advice, and here's what they turned out like:


With a smidgin of grated dark chocolate topped onto each cupcake. Yum.

I am totally feeling burgundy next season too, in more ways than wine... (ha. I am murdering the berry puns this evening!)

Buckled Chelsea Boots; Deena & Ozzy at Urban Outfitters; £120

Jumper; H&M; £12.99
Waxed Jeans; Zara; £39.99
Am totally going to justify the H&M sweater as an 'investment' piece, regardless of the fact that it costs around a tenner. I can picture it getting worn now, in my idyllic (and unrealistic) winter fantasies of reading by  a log fire and drinking a pricey bottle of merlot whilst reading my copy of Eric Fernie's Art History and its Methods.

Alas, my classiness starts and ends there. This is a photo my best friend took of me devouring one of my cupcakes as we skyped the other night. It appears I'm actually eyeing up the cake here. Not cool.


In other news, I am actually in love with these Alexander McQueen /Puma collaboration Dextral hi tops that I saw a few weeks back when the Designed to Win exhibition opened at the Design Museum. Oh my, they're more devour-able than any cake out there. And going by the above photograph, that's evidently saying a lot...


Img Courtesy: Hypebeast

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Thursday, 9 August 2012
Oh Bishampton, mon chou! .(scribbled at 13:46 )

Escaping to the antithesis of London for a Sunday afternoon is heaven. As I type this onto Blogger right now, I'm pondering whether it would actually be feasible to grab a train once a month to the most deserted patch of countryside I can find in Worcestershire, and just lie down on the grass for an afternoon...

Anway, so back on Sunday I actually awoke at the crack of dawn just to bake a carrot cake for my uncle's retirement party. I think I'm going up in the popularity stakes amongst other family members aha, as it turned out delicious (pretty sure it was because I opted for a cream cheese icing, which is that little bit more moreish)...

Anyway, I wouldn't normally blog about personal life, but it was such a fantastic afternoon. The band were great, and the catering was AWESOME. I was still feeling stuffed at work the following morning!

My sisters' cakes. Cutely decorated with a mound of marshmallows.

mon gâteau aux carottes.

The caterers prepared a delicious feast of bite sized dishes, which kind of meant you didn't feel guilty about eating what essentially was a 6 course meal...

The menu was entirely in Italian as well, which made choosing dishes to eat after you've drunk 3 Peronis and a substantial amount of Pimms was quite hilarious: even after studying Italian for a year, I cannot say 'Buongiorno' accurately to save my life.


Rollata di Salmone Affumicato

Tartara di Pesce e Cocco


...and the dessert platter? Well, effing hell. WOW. Well from left-to-right on my photograph below it reads like this

Foreground: Meringhatta con crema di banana e cioccolato, Tazza al cioccolato, Crema caramellizzata all' arancio (Baby pavlova with banana chocolate cream, chocolate pot and orange crème brûlée)
Background: Torta al mascarpone con fragole e cioccolato blanco, crostatina al limone (Strawberry and white chocolate cheesecake, lemon tart)

also, slightly cut off the photograph on the left (which surpisingly enough, I didn;t get round to eating as I actually had to run for the train back to Paddington) was a torta della nonna, which is known as 'Grandma Cake'...




anyway, before I forget and hit 'publish', here's the carrot cake recipe. I was tempted to opt for Angela Hartnett's recipe, but due to an essential lack of lemon juice, went for the BBC variety. Evidently I'm too lazy to even take a 2 minute walk to Sainsbury's these days...

Ingredients:
175g brown sugar (recipe states 'light' but I tried it out with dark as well and both taste delish')
175ml sunflower oil (I prefer Grapeseed, it's great for baking)
175g self raising flour
3 large eggs
140g grated carrots
100g raisins
Grated zest of 1 large orange
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Icing*:
175g Icing Sugar
1 1/2- 2tbsp orange juice

Method:

1.Preheat your oven to 180c (160 if fan oven). Grease and line an 18cm square cake tin with baking parchment

2.  Lightly mix the sugar, oil and eggs into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the grated carrots, orange rind and raisins.

3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a bowl. Once done, sift this into the mixing bowl with the other ingredients. Lightly mix all the ingredients together until fully amalgamated.
4. Pour into your (lined) cake tin and bake it for around 45 minutes. It should be springy, and obviously, your skewer should come out clean.

5. Cool on a wire rack. To make the icing: just stir everything together, and then pour across your cake in a decorative fashion like this:

My first carrot cake attempt that I tested out on work colleagues.

*I didn't follow this part. With icing, I find it's always best to use your noggin and mix/add the ingredients together as you see fit. If you want to go for a cream cheese frosting like I did, I used around 200g of (full fat, OBVS) cream cheese, with around 75-85g of icing sugar. Oh, and I added in a wee teaspoon of ground cinnamon too.

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Sunday, 29 July 2012
Happy Olympics!! .(scribbled at 21:38 )

It's now been 2 days since Friday's hysteria at the Opening Ceremony in Stratford, and as my tube rides around the city haven't been complete and utter chaos since then I've now decided the Olympics aren't so bad after all...

Regardless of how lazy this weekend has been, I don't think I can spare 4 hours with iPlayer absorbing Danny Boyle's extravaganza right now. But the beginning of Friday's events were pretty cool though. I actually left the house early to catch the All the Bells event on my walk to work (my devotion to contemporary art astounds me sometimes...). If you live under a bigger rock than I do, then basically Martin Creed asked everyone everywhere to ring a bell (any bell will do!) for 3 minutes between 8:12- 8:15am to celebrate the start of the Olympics. When I first heard about this, I thought Creed would want everyone ringing cowbells and other ridiculously loud instruments, but it was a whole different kettle of fish on Millennium Bridge: it was actually serene!

Apparently Martin Creed was intending to ring his own door bell
incessantly for 3 minutes. Which doesn't surprise me.
Undoubtedly the best 3 minutes I've had outside Tate Modern, everything was so peaceful in a bizarre way. On the top right hand corner of that photograph you see one of the many office-workers-that-looks-like-they've-came-from-the-opening-credits-of-the-apprentice ...but this was no ordinary suit. Yes, whilst people were crossing the bridge to get to work they jingled bells all the way. (apologies for pun, I'm too lazy to reword it now). Ditto cyclists, who also took time to gently tap the bell on their handlebar as a means of joining the camaraderie... 

...and ditto that guy in the sunglasses who like me, just woke up early for Creed.

Mmm, I'm currently on a sugary high right now as I type. My landlady baked these scones earlier, and they are delicious . How I haven't gorged the entire lot is beyond me. Teamed with a sliver of butter and a lashing (or four) of your finest jam (I opted for Fortnum & Mason's strawberry variety, a gift from a brilliant friend of mine), I am absolutely certain that there's always time for home baked loveliness.



P.S, I saw Marcus Brigstocke at St. Pancras earlier!
P.P.S, I saw this on my street earlier. I think North London has a peculiar answer to Banksy who evidently feels induced by Flemish bonding...

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Tuesday, 24 July 2012
Haghighian at Carroll / Fletcher .(scribbled at 21:48 )

Finally getting into the swing of blogging regularly again.
Anyway, I went to Carroll / Fletcher's private view last Thursday night for Natascha Sadr Haghighian's solo show.
de paso (2012)
This is de paso (2012), the first work we see on first entering the gallery. A rather bizarre piece, it appears on first viewing that the suitcase crushes the bottle and simultaneously moves about the gallery floor, gradually pulling itself through the space. The sound of the plastic being manipulated is recorded, then amplified throughout the entire room through the microphone. Plutôt intelligent, oui? 

Empire of the Senseless Part I (2006)
The Microscope (2006)
The photograph on the right depicts a detail of Empire of the Senseless Part I, Haghighian's gallery installation of lights switching themselves off in structured intervals. As I type this, I realise that I've made it sound quite Martin Creed. Which it isn't. Rather than place these floodlights in a single room, Haghighian has used the gallery staircase which she has then connected to a sensor, so they trigger whenever anyone ventures down to the gallery's basement. On following the direction of the light, the viewer is lead to the other aspect of Empire of the Senseless Part 1, which is a large amount of text, painted on in phosphorescent paint and extracted from the novel Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker.

Haghighian explores these notions of identity, corporatism and this recurring sense of manipulations through a vast variety of media. Here, on first viewing The Microscope (Top left photo) we assume that this is a classic object trouvé, but on closer inspection  the microscope amplifies what appears to be a discussion through the eye piece.
Vice/Virtue (2001)





Unternehmen:Bermuda (Bermuda: Venture) (2000)


...and by the time I'd finished watching the alternating drawings of Vice/Virtue, I decided to cure a little hunger pang with this delight from Patisserie Valerie.

Blueberry Cupcake, £2

Natascha Sadr Haghighian's solo exhibition continues until 14 September.

www.carrollfletcher.com

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about
diaristic ramblings about architecture, design, art, baking and shoes.

...all posts penned by Vikki, a twenty-something girl based in London (but currently having itchy feet and wanting to move back to Neuilly).

all these poorly taken photographs are indeed my own.


Vermeer's Victoria Sponge.