Blog-Backlog_Day Fourteen_

Last Day...

Camden Market


High Tea

Packing

Modern Family Dinner :)

Blog-Backlog_Day Thirteen_C

Blog-Backlog_Day Thirteen_B

Camden Art Center

Never the Same River Twice
curated by Simon Starling


The show was about exploring work out of its context of time, and how the pieces interrelate, and how that relates to and from a contemporary. Some really wonderful slections includeing Mark Nelson, Francis Alyse, and Christan Boltanski.

Blog-Backlog_Day Thirteen_A

East End Gallery Hunt.
So, we all met up at Burrough market and went on a gallery Hunt.
Then onward to the East End...

The First gallery we went to was above a tavern, interesting location. The work was mixed media sculptures, well rendered through a mix of plastics and wood. Not terribly, impressive but well fabricated.

The next Gallery was the Netti Horn Gallery
Showing two videos. One about with an angry young woman, and the
other a video montage of clips of how the media has rendered death; spanning from German Avante-guarde, Disney and Showtime's Six Feet under

Chicks On Speed
what can i say about plat form shoes and circuit bending that hasn't already been said...

to be honest when i first read chicks on speed i assumed, baby chickens ans was instantly appalled... however, it was cheeky (female i presume) sound art (and i really should say noise rock) installation.

stopped for a vegan cupcake and on ward to the next gallery

The next Gallery had a series of "disportraits" very nice
after seeing a portrait show earlier in the week. The gallery
attendants however were really rude.

The last gallery was actually surprisingly enougha lot like the first, abstract mostly geometric and linear work

Blog-Backlog_Day Twelve _B

The National Portrait Gallery

Why we didn't go the natural portrait gallery, the same day as the national gallery, I don't know. Maybe the the later admission time... In any event, there was a portrait prize going on, which was worth seeing in theory. I don't know a whole lot about photo, the only photo background i have is PH101 from FIT that was a fashion photography classes, and some theory based on the reproducibility image (yep, I'm talking about Benjamin) so i found the images at least visually interesting to look at.


I really enjoyed the contemporary portrait gallery, seeing the blood head was nice, just as a contemporary art icon piece having to do quite literally with the body and identity. One of the older proratists I made a point of seeing, was Jane Austin, popular English writer author of Pride and Prejudice a personal high school favorite.



My Favorite show, was the portraits of English people in New York City. I am a New York's New Yorker, and fall within Saachi's description "New Yorkers think the sun rises and sets with the (NY) Times". I loved the simple black and white portraits and captions along side the image to relate each person to their backdrop.

(photo via emily's blog)

Blog-Backlog_Day Twelve _A

A Rain Thames tour to the Prime Meridian

The Thames Rive tour, calling it a cruise is mildly over stating... was a tad underwhelming. It would have made more sense earlier in the trip, why would we want to see the out side of buildings from the water when we've already been inside, it was slightly counter-intuitive. Never the less it was a nice little sight seeing outing. The highlight of the tour, was Emily telling me about a show curated by Simon Starling, an artist whose work I enjoy in both practice and concept (and less so by what is actually produced...but that goes with the territory of concept based work...) so seeing his hand at curating sounded perfect.



Its really interesting to see the personification of measurable time, a man made construct that is universally agreed upon, in one way or another, for the world to operate on a global scale.

Blog-Backlog_Day Eleven_A

Free Day : Sherlock Holmes Museum and Fish(less)&Chips

My mom is a long time Sherlock Holmes fan and I felt like I couldn't leave London without stopping by 221 Baker Street. It was really quite cheesy, and was crowed with a field trip of French students who were less than thrilled to be there. Never the less I'm glad I went.

I had been slightly jealous of people partaking in cultural dishes. While I am a very very very happy vegan, and I had searched up some stores to be healthy one while abroad, it seemed a little upsetting to me, from a completely kitchy-tourist way to not have fish and chips. Luckily London is very vegan friendly and there was a place called the Loving-Hut which had a faux fish and chips. Cruelty free and delish.

Blog-Backlog_Day Ten_B

Design Museum

I had been looking forward to this museum for quite sometime. I adore fashion illustration, and I prevaricate a museum dedicated to design, and an illustration just as much as I do a Fine Art Museum. Sometimes I'm concerned that people confuse my need to separate Fine Art from Design as a way to elevate the fine arts, or to say one is better than the other, when thats not entirely true. Design and Fine Art serve two different functions, and I think its important not to confuse the two. There is even, High Design, which elevates itself from commercial design, (Haute Couture Design), so there are idustry wide stadands are both ends that really do support the position I take. I come from an originally fashion background, having studied pattern making, rendering, and construction in high school, for about 2 and half years. I then switched over to the fine arts for a number of reasons, but I don't undervalue design.

While photos in the museum where discouraged, sketchbooks were! there was a small sign that said just that "Sketching encouraged" which i thought was really great for students and designers alike. The fashion illustration show had some illustrations for some major designers including Chanel, Dior, and McQueen. It showed them chronologically to show the evolution of fashion illustration from past to present. Really just a beautiful show. The one thing i would change would be uniform frames, the walls were gauzy white and lit from within making an ephemeral yet polished space, and some of the frames like the one in the picture below just seem gaudy and out of place.

Blog-Backlog_Day Ten_A

Tower Of London

I really enjoyed the Tower of London, not so much for the tower, of course, but for Tower Bridge. (Often, confused for London Bridge because of its more iconic appearance). The tower was interesting, for historic value I suppose. The crown jewels, I couldn't even image being real because of how little security was there... it really just seemed too easy...

Blog-Backlog_Day Nine_A

The British Museum

A little trip to the British Museum located conveniently up the block from our flat. The British Museum is essentially a natural history museum, or a museum of more notable artifacts than works of fine art. Lovely. With that being said I spent an usually long time in the Egyptian galleries; normally that's not really my cup of tea, but I meandered around never the less. I found the museum pretty interesting, from a really superficial vantage point. Thinking a bit a head toward the spring semester where I knew I would be taking museum studies I noticed a lot about visitor information, set up, and what I found probably the most interesting were small stations where you could interact with the artifacts. (supervised of course) This again, note worthy for people with older children. I'm sure the wee ones wouldn't find that the least bit interesting. I did see a few boys around ages 5-8 really interested in the vintage coin collection. Also, for the elderly or those who plan on spending a lot of time sitting in the museum, they had little stools you could take around and have a seat where ever you are in the museum. That's really delightful for people who want sketch, or just don't want spend hours on their feet, but could spend hours in the museum.

The Rosetta Stone
Much smaller in person than I had assumed, and clearly a point of interest to many. It was crowed by what looked mostly like students, and tourists. I suppose it is one of the most important artifacts of language to date.

The Marbles


Famed for their controversy they are absolutely sunning in person, in all of their fragmented glory.

Blog-Backlog_Day Eight_C

On our way from Kensington Gardens, to the Barbican we had sometime and I thought it would be nice to check out the Fashion Textitle Musuem, which, of course, when we go there was closed. We arrived roughly at 5:20 and the last admission was at 5:15. AUGH. Luckily we were in a relatively artsy part of town so there were a few galleries around. One of which was a blown glass studio, with a shop in the store front and a studio right behind it, so you could see the artisans working. It was really a nice little find. I was a little disappointed not to see the FTM but, you win some you loose some.

The Damine Ortega show, I am going to say was poorly curated. I don't know how he let his work get in stalled that way. the space, i thought, though small, could have easily represented the time span of which he was working, and the work that he had. From a crafting standpoint, it seemed a bit Unmonumental, and the intent was sort of masked by the placement of the work. Some individual pieces were more interesting than others, but that is with any body of work.

From there we made our way to the show preformed by the National Theater of Scotland. I am not really, a theater person. I thought Blackwatch was a nice reminder of the political climate that we are in right now, even while on amazing London trip. Its really difficult, I found in a lot of ways to stay on top of international news while on this kind of a trip, because it everything really becomes so surreal, and walking becomes exhausting, even looking and thinking about art becomes tiring; but then to remember - oh, shit, right; there's are wars going on right now. It really trivializes wet shoes and theory. At the same time though, its so out of our hands, its a really difficult position i find myself squirming in frequently. As I said, I am not really a theater person so a lot of it was lost on me. It was good, but not something I would have liked to go see on my own.