Body Politic

Went to see an Antony Gormley exhibition a while back and took these. It’s always a pleasure to look at his art, and to see how he re-interprets his own body through various scales and mediums. The sculptures are all based on the proportions of his body, and I found the brick ones especially fascinating as you could see that each brick referred to each joint/muscle group of the body (I particularly liked the square buttock bricks). The theme of the exhibition was a serious one, so if you want to find out more, you can watch this film where Gormley talks about the inspiration for this work. He’s such an intelligent artist, and has interesting messages embedded in his art.

P.S. I’m also glad I caught the man in the last pic mimicking one of the sculptures 🤗

Silly silly silly

The week that Z was here was brilliant. We laughed so much, to the extent that I noticed it, so in a sort of response to my recent jumping picture of her, here’s a triptych (if you’re reading this on a computer) by her of someone behaving badly in a gallery (no art or fellow visitors were hurt in these pictures).

Jump start

Heeeeey. I think' it’s too late to say HNY by now, but I hope you’re as well as you can be? December kicked my butt (we all ended up with Covid over xmas - ho ho ho) and January is… January. Hard work. I feel eternally tired and find it tricky to spend any time not at home. I’m usually fine with hibernating, but this winter feels different. So, can we fake it ‘til we make it I wonder? Can I somehow trick myself out of this stupor? Well, in little over a week this wonderful human is coming to stay with us. Can’t really think of a better way to brighten up this toughest of months. What a treat.

Some kind of magic

It feels like it’s been a while since there’s been an awe-inspiring installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. In fact, maybe it’s been years or maybe even a decade. Well, El Anatsui’s Behind the Red Moon is a definite must-see. In fact, I’d like to go back on a sunny day to see how different it might look - can it glimmer even more than this? I hope you can sense the scale of these, as they’re absolutely huge. I’ve seen Anatsui’s work before, but not on this scale. To explain what these are made out of, I’ve copied and pasted this from his website: Anatsui is well-known for large scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of aluminium bottle caps sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. These intricate works, which can grow to be massive in scale, are luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. He leaves the installations open and encourages the works to take new forms every time they are installed. Mind blowing. It’s on until April 14th 2024, so if you like what you see and you happen to be in town before then, well you know the drill. Go.