By Friday I was quite ill. I’d caught a cold at some point during the week and was trying to ignore the fact that I had a sore throat and runny nose and a bit of a cough, but by Friday morning I had no energy left. I got up and had a shower and then curled up on the sofa and refused to move. We had a planned an early start as we wanted to walk to the Serpentine Gallery and then go to the Saatchi Gallery too, but my body refused to move.
So Colin went in on his own whilst I convalesced on the sofa and tried to muster the energy to get up and get dressed. It was good to have the extra sleep and the peace and quiet though. I did get up eventually and decided to head into London and meet Colin at a small gallery that was showing a few pieces by Joseph Cornell. So I headed in and had a bit of a wonder around poshville and all the expensive shops that I would never ever be caught dead in – not much of a fashionista or at all label/brand obsessed – I’m much happier in charity shops. It was quite an amusing ramble amongst the streets littered with the fashion obsessed.
I stumbled upon the The Haunch of Venison gallery – a very odd name – and popped in to see what was on as I noticed the name Polly Morgan on the poster outside and I love her work. Psychopomps is Polly Morgan’s first solo exhibition at the Haunch of Venison gallery. It consists of four suspended taxidermy sculptures within a very dark room, lit with directional lights, each poised between metamorphosis and flight.
This kind of reminded me of the hummingbird case we’d seen at the Natural History Museum.
Also being exhibited was a load of work by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, someone I’d never heard of. I quite liked her work though. The exhibition was entitled ‘I Will Survive’ and I can only guess that it’s taken from the Gloria Gaynor song. There was no literature to accompany the exhibition so I didn’t have any idea what it was all about.The artist uses embroidery and crochet in her work and I wasn’t very fond of the large sewn pieces that hung from walls and took over huge rooms, but I did take a shine to the ceramic figures and objects covered in intricate crochet lace patterns. It’s quite odd to see something quite tacky like a large ceramic dog or crab covered in such detailed lace work – it takes the tacky objuect into another realm. The crochet lace fits like a glove over each object and the craftsmanship involved is quite impressive – what it’s all about, I have no idea.
There was even a baby grand and stool covered in lace too, all alone in a large room – love it!
I wish I’d had more time in here to find out more about the work, but I had to go and meet Colin and see what turned out to be a really crap exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s work – very badly presented, really badly lit – so coffee and cake were in order.
We decided to walk home as it would only take about 30 minutes and we’d get to walk down Abbey Road and go to the pub on the way. We passed a Conran shop and decided to pop in and have a look round – some really lovey, but over priced stuff, but glad we had a look as we found the fab felt map on the wall:
It was like the small fuzzy felt mats we had when we were kids, but much much bigger and the animals are bigger and better too and not just fat coloured shapes. It had all the country names as plaques and lots of animals and buildings and objects that you could stick all over the place. A great idea, but not sure I would spend £299 [!!!!] on it – would prefer to make it myself at a fraction of the cost!
Walking past Abbey Road was funny – lots of groupies hanging about and trying not to get knocked over whilst taking pictures of each other walking across the Zebra crossing made famous by the Beatles. Loads of graffiti all over the walls that wasn’t very original – how many times do you need to write ‘all you need is love’? I quite liked this sign though:
We ended up at The Salt House for a quick drink before heading home.
