We went out to Gunes Terkol’s opening at the organhaus Gallery last night. Before, we dashed into our local little restaurant for a quick bite. Pablo seems to have shifted into comfort mode here – off to see the people in the cafe, then off the see the people in the bar. I am chasing after him – then the ladies are grabbing his hand and taking him for walks, giving him more sweets at dinner time… Matt had dressed him in three quarter pants, as his jeans had not dried yet. oh, did we get told off for this – all of the ladies were cussing Matt! In winter, even if its not that cold, everyone should cover themselves, and no one has any problem telling you off if you don’t. Shaking their heads at us as they sneak him more sweets.
We can’t sit down for a dinner with out the ladies grabbing pablo’s hand and taking him for walks to see all the other ladies. He thinks if they are grabbing his hand, its OK to walk off – which leaves matt and I on a constant state of watching as he explores. You can turn for one second, and he is gone. I am trying to teach him to ask us first, but its not working. By the third week in Beijing, it was the same – Pablo would make him self at home with everyone. Walk in to gallery spaces, say hi to everyone, make himself comfortable on their couch, start flipping through the artbooks. Everyone was ‘Oh hi Pablo!’. He would walk into shops and studios – say hi, start playing with everyone. He knew more people than we did. He seems like a little explorer and he doesn’t seem to stress at all if we are not beside him. I love his curiousity and don’t want to dampen it with fear, but we are on the constant look out with him. We are off to India for a few months next year, so he needs to learn to stay beside us. I keep saying mummy and daddy don’t want to lose you – stay close to us, but he has so much trust with everyone, all he knows is people laughing, smiling and playing with him.
We then ventured over to an opening of the students. The students do courses so they can get into university – and interestingly, this is all about technique – so we saw hundreds of drawings looking exactly the same, and hundreds of still life paintings of fruit looking exactly the same. The same colour palet, the same brush stroke. One would think the whole exhibition was the same artist. Once the students master this technique, they make the entrance exam for Sichuan university. This can take years. As we walked in, all the students saw Pablo and all the focus shifted from the art to us. We had hundreds of people surrounding us, cameras out. Pablo, powered by the Snicker bar given to him by the lady at the Bar, decided that instead of his usual hide his face routine, he would pose for everyone, so he jumped out of the pram and started pulling moves like a model. This created a bit of a frenzy of photographers.
Gunes Terkol’s, the other artist in resident as Organhaus was great. She works with different local women – and she mostly uses fabric and stitiching, a real sense of things have been hand touched. Gunes is from Istanbul.
