Fifth Week +2: The recap & wind down

 As I come to the end of my London stay, I've been experiencing alternating waves of nostalgia about my home-from-home and pangs of homesickness for my Northampton. It's been a week of lasts -- last walk to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market, last dash to Haverstock Hill to catch the tube, last loaf of rye bread with raisins and walnuts from Panzer's in St John's Wood, last pastel de nata, last meetups with friends. There are so many things that I'll miss about London, but I'm feeling a bit jaded and could do without the traffic and congestion, the crowded tubes (especially when there are unmasked people coughing away for their whole journey), unruly school groups in various cultural institutions, babies pushed in prams/chairs the size of Smart Cars, and tourists who stop in the entry to tube platforms without going left or right. But I try not to dwell on these things, rather to look back on all the fab stuff I've done here. And week five was no exception. 

Arts and culture recap:

• Fashion City exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands. This exhibition focuses on the rich history of the Jewish community in clothing design, manufacture and retail in London. It's so much more than just fashion, however, taking in immigration, education, social and economic history. The exhibition is arranged somewhat like shops, starting in the East End and then leading -- through a fake tube station tunnel -- to the West End. Even though I recognize only some of the fashion labels, I loved looking a the clothing and reading about the people involved. Many of the other people viewing the exhibits were Londoners in their 70s and 80s, and it was fun to catch snippets of their conversations as they reminisced about what they wore and people they knew. I spent a good two hours there and probably could have done more but my back wasn't having it. 

• A brief stop back at the Guildhall Art Gallery to see the Grayson Perry print 'Animal Spirit' that I'd missed when I was there previously. (Thanks to Jen for letting me know about this.) I also looked around at some of the permanent collection. 

• White Cube Bermondsey with my friend Judy to see large-scale paintings by Julie Mehretu, who is new to me. At first glance, the paintings -- particularly the dark ones -- looked very similar to each other. But the longer I looked at them, the more I saw. Different paints came forward or receded, revealing forms -- a hand here, a torso there. With no wall text to inform me, I had a hard time figuring out which paintings were in response to the war in Ukraine or the events of January 6 in Washington, DC, but I definitely sensed action and violence in several of them. 

• Judy and I continued on to the Fashion and Textile Museum to see Fabric of Democracy, an exhibition about how messages, codes, propaganda and slogans have been incorporated into fabric in aid of various causes. The exhibition is a bit disorganized, with something about the French Revolution next to World War II silk maps, and some exhibits worked much better than others. I enjoyed seeing all the scarves printed by Jacqmar of London in the 1940s with designs and slogans telling people that "you never know who's listening" or to Save for Victory.

• I took a day trip to the seaside town of Eastbourne, where this year's Turner Prize finalists are on display at Towner Eastbourne. The weather was crap for the train ride south, and it was drizzling a bit for the first hour I was in Eastbourne, but then the sun came out and, though windy, it was warm and pleasant enough to take a long walk along the shingle beach before going to the Towner. The exhibition began with videos about each of the four finalists in which they spoke about their creative process and showed more of the body of work that got them nominated. The videos were very informative, especially as the exhibition space is fairly limited and only a small selection of each artist's work is on display in their gallery. With a wide variety of works to look at, I liked some better than others and really couldn't say who I thought should win the prize (it will be announced on 5 December). 

• Friday was full of art in the East End, starting with Christo: Early Works, a pre-sale exhibition hosted by Gagosian, held inside 4 Princelet Street in Spitalfields. I met my friends David, Janie and Jane there, primarily to see the interior of this 18th century Huguenot silk weaver's house, and it was fun to take photos and mooch around, looking at the woodwork, windows and doors, bathtub and toilet. I had no prior expectations about the actual art works and must admit that I did like several of them. My burner phone's camera couldn't handle the low light, but you can see Christo's works in situ in the link above.

• The nearby, newly opened Gilbert & George Centre, where their exhibition Paradisical Pictures. In typical G&G style, these huge photo montages are colourful, comical and intriguing. The theme of this series is vegetation -- outsized and lurid -- with G&G peering out from amidst the leaves and tendrils. The purpose-built gallery is lovely and the perfect space for their work. 

• Continuing on down Brick Lane (after a lunch of Indian food at Meraz in Hanbury Street), we next stopped at the Whitechapel Gallery. The others peeled off and I stayed to see the exhibition Nicole Eisenman: What Happened. An extensive retrospective of this American artist's work across three decades, the exhibition of drawings, paintings and sculpture is arranged chronologically around themes of the NYC lesbian scene in the 1990s, introspection and self, art class, screen time, making with muck, and the rise of right-wing politics. While I didn't much like the early, cartoony and rather gross drawings, my appreciation increased as the exhibition progressed. The sculptures -- large heads, an artist at a revolving potter's wheel -- were fun. 

• Three more very brief stops at galleries in Whitechapel. I first saw photos from the Brady Photographic Archive of the Brady Girls' Clubs (community-based clubs for local girls) in the Atrium Gallery at London Metropolitan University. Next, Kevin Brisco Jr's exhibition But I Hear There Are New Suns at the Union Pacific gallery. This Louisiana-based painter's impressive works incorporate two plants -- sugar cane and four o'clock flower -- with connections to the transatlantic slave trade. Finally, a very brief look at a group exhibition called The last train after the last train at Public Gallery. Maybe I was just knackered, but this exhibition didn't float my boat. 
• On Saturday, I darted around trying unsuccessfully to avoid the rain, and saw two photography exhibitions. First up, Stepping Stones: Three Photographic Journeys at Large Glass on the Caledonian Road. I liked this exhibition very much, particularly the 'Coast to Coast' photos by Gerry Johansson, taken with a large-format (8x10) camera. Next to the Estorick Collection in Canonbury Square to see an exhibition by the Italian photographer Lisetta Carmi. The exhibition is divided into two sections -- industry (the docks of Genoa, steel works and cork factory) and groundbreaking photos of the trans community. There was a video running in a loop of an interview with Carmi in which she talks about working as a woman photographer in post-war Italy.

• And squeezing one last exhibition in, I saw Capturing the Moment at Tate Modern on Monday. This one is about the influence of photography on painting, painting on photography, and the melding of the two. The works (most of which I'd never seen before) were intriguing, the wall text was thought-provoking, and the galleries were blissfully free of children even though it's half-term and much of the museum was heaving with them.

A wee bit of history this past week:

• Tour of Oxford House, an East End settlement house founded in 1884 by Keble College, Oxford University as a place for students to live and work among the Bethnal Green community.
• A walk around De Beauvoir Town with my friend Lesley. I knew nothing of this small area tucked between Islington and Haggerston. I learned about the history, from the original manor house through Victorian housing development to what we see today. Lesley will have a version of this walk on offer soon and I highly recommend it. 
• A talk at the Primrose Hill Community Association on early travelers to the Gobi Desert. 
• When the rain departed and the sun returned, I did a guided tour of Brompton Cemetery (one of the Magnificent Seven). I do love a cemetery and I hadn't been to Brompton in yonks, so this fit the bill for a Sunday afternoon. Tours are offered by the Friends of Brompton Cemetery nearly every Sunday for only a tenner. 

• And a final guided walk around Hampstead Garden Suburb in Golders Green with Marilyn Greene. I did her excellent walk on modernist architecture in Hampstead last year and had been wanting to do the Hampstead Garden Suburb walk for ages. 

Now I'm on to organizing, packing and tidying up in preparation for my departure on Wednesday. As always, it's been a marvelous visit and I'm so very grateful to my friends who joined me for art and adventure and to my lovely AirBnB hosts who made me feel so welcomed and comfortable. Despite my grumpiness at the start of this post, I do love London and truly believe that a big part of me belongs here. Until next year, when I'll see you again underneath the arches. 

The stats:

Monday:

£6 Museum of London Docklands

£2.80 brownie

£5 EE package

15,427 steps

6.29 miles

Tuesday:

£1.25 pastel de nata

£7.50 Oxford House tour

£3 glass of wine at PHCA talk

20,251 steps

8.36 miles

Wednesday:

£5.75 Fashion and Textile Museum

£6.50 bread from Panzer's

11,381 steps

4.94 miles

Thursday:

£20 train to Eastbourne

£2 scone

£6 glass of wine at Towner Eastbourne

£1.10 packet of crisps

£11.70 groceries

20,731 steps

8.63 miles

Friday:

£10 lunch at Meraz 

£6 Whitechapel Gallery

£8.69 wine and veg

£30 top up Oyster card

14,410 steps

5.95 miles

Saturday:

£7.50 farmers' market

£3.75 Estorick Collection

16,239 steps

6.75 miles

Sunday:

£1.72 ibuprofen & Hall's from Boots

£10 Brompton Cemetery tour

19,909 steps

8.23 miles

Monday:

£9.50 Tate Modern

£2.10 pastel de nata

13,818 steps

5.62 miles

Tuesday:

£10 Hampstead Garden Suburb walk

£1 pain au raisin 

£12.95 fish & chips

21,199 steps

8.76 miles