Rainy Sunday

I cut myself some slack today, opting for a lie in this morning, then doing laundry and tidying up my space. Monday is rubbish day in the borough of Islington, so I brought up my recycling to go out with that from the rest of the house. The weather is still being a pig and I was in no mood to go out in the rain, so I faffed around till a bit after noon before heading out. 

I really had only one destination for today — the Museum of London in Docklands. I would normally have taken the DLR to West India Quay, but there was a partial closure and I was routed via Canary Wharf.

I hadn't been there in ages, so I looked at some of the new buildings.

And walked through Jubilee Park, which sits on top of the tube station. There's a great water feature that forms the spine of the park, and there are lots of benches all around. The park does just what it's supposed to do — it brings the scale of things from that of the surrounding tall buildings back down to human level. It's quiet, away from the traffic noise, and even smells great because of all the fir trees. 

I saw some new (to me) sculpture.

And reached West India Quay. The Museum of London in Docklands is housed in a former sugar warehouse along an old wharf. The permanent exhibitions, which I'd seen, have to do with London's part in the sugar and slave trade as well as the development of the docks. But I was there today to see Secret Rivers, an exhibition about the lost, buried  and/or forgotten rivers that flow into the Thames. 

The exhibition had a number of items found on the foreshore of the Thames and in digging around the other rivers, similar to what I'd seen in the exhibition at the Bargehouse except that these objects were really exceptional. The stuff includes bones, coins, leather shoes, children's toys, an engraved dog collar from the 18th (?) century, axes, daggers, a Medieval three-holer toilet seat, audio of sounds of the rivers, video from down in the sewers and a cope (a cape or cloak) worn by the Bishop of Lambeth at a recent blessing of the Thames that was made by an artist from the detritus of the river. 

I told myself that if it was not raining when I left the museum, I'd take the overground up to Shoreditch to mooch around for the rest of the afternoon. But it was raining, so I executed Plan B, heading back to London Bridge station and a short walk to the White Cube Bermondsey. 

I didn't know anything about the three women artists on exhibition, but I was immediately drawn to the galleries containing the work of Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist whose work involves themes of surveillance, incarceration, occupation and globalization. I managed to catch the second half of a video in which she talked about her work and what it meant. I really liked the exhibition and thoroughly enjoyed taking photos of the installations. I love photographing at the White Cube. The walls are white (duh) and the visitors often wear black with pops of colour here and there. It makes for good fun photographing the works and the punters looking at the works. 

Back in Bermondsey Street:

After more dodging of rain, I'm now back in Tufnell Park. Soon, I'll heat up my take-away Ethiopian that I'll have for me suppa. Off to Margate in the morning. 

Stats:
£35.10 for another one-week travel card loaded onto my Oyster
£1.50 cookie
£6 take-away for dinner
15,487 steps
6.6 miles