how to emerge? Drawing …
Spent three hours, yesterday afternoon, between London’s National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square drawing and looking, and all for free!
Aren’t we lucky. YES WE ARE!
I know we are in the midst of savage cuts. Cuts, cuts, cuts but, still …. there’s something amazing about being able to spend a warm afternoon, out of the rain, looking at Tudor kings and queens. Seeing the real thing. And a whole history of modernism, up close and personal, Monet, Degas, Pissaro, Matisse. And for nothing … not a penny [except TAX, of course, but it’s so worth it]
Then, squinting up at Nelson, I walk straight on up to Picadilly Circus and Regents Street -dodging Japanese tourists – to Saville Row and Hauser and Wirth to see the new Martin Creed show.
Fantastic, in parts. Still thinking about the colourful abstract paintings in the first gallery, and the Dog photos. They did made me laugh, and think of Crufts, dog-lovers, cheap birthday cards, and what a sentimental dog-adoring nation [not me!] Britain is, all in one. Presume irony reigns?
Then on to Gallery two, two doors down – a vast white space with a single revolving sculpture [or strong simple message]. And spent a wonderful hour contemplating Creed’s monumental neon sign: MOTHERS … and loved it. The word revolves slowly, then faster, up to 7 revolutions a minute, so you feel a light rush of air on your face. What simple joys, sketching and watching. The audience, students and the well-dressed, alike, drifting in off the street, intrigued.
Finally, a Nelson’s Column for Women.
ends
www.annabeltilley.moonfruit.com
www.hauserwirth.com
www.martincreed.com
