All Culture, No Whinging (Week 2)

With my creature-comfort needs and wants now satisfied, I'm no longer flitting about from charity shop to car boot sale to Poundland and have settled into life in the loft in Tufnell Park. I'm getting better at using the minute kitchen and at buying groceries every other day given the size of the tiny fridge. But turn me loose in a Waitrose and I'm sure to come out with more than I can shove into that fridge or cook in the next few days. It's an ongoing learning curve. 

The sun didn't make much of an appearance in the past week, but the temps have been fine for the most part -- a bit chilly in the morning and evening, but I've been comfortable. The grey and gloomy days have driven me indoors for most of my activities, however, resulting in lots of cultural pursuits. So, make yourself a cuppa or pour a pint and read on.

On Monday (that difficult-to-plan day of the week, I went to the following places and had a bit of a late-afternoon crisis.

I started at the Courtauld Gallery to see Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life. I loved the paintings -- cakes, pies, deli counters -- but, as the Courtauld no longer gives Art Pass discounts (or even senior citizen discounts), I didn't think 22 paintings for £18 was good value for money. I found it amusing that the wall text provided explanations of American terms, for example the text for the painting Cold Cereal described it as being "in distinction from warm breakfast grains."

Next, over to Kensington to the Japan House for their current (free) exhibition Pictograms, about how all these universal icons were conceived, designed and accepted world-wide, particularly with the mass-appeal of emojis. 

I used their fabulous loos again. On my way out, I was speaking with the cleaner about how much I love these loos but am afraid to push any of the buttons. She took me back into one of the cubicles and showed me how they work, encouraging me to try them next time. 

I then walked to Leighton House, which is free with my Art Pass. The small exhibitions -- Contemporary Art from the Middle East and North Africa and Ghost Objects -- were so-so. I enjoyed Leighton House: A Journey through 100 Years, showing photos of the house as it was originally, through various uses and bomb damage, to its restoration as what it is today. Here's one of the ghosts objects (something that used to be in the house but is no longer there):

When I exited the house around 4 pm and pulled out my phone to ask the Citymapper app to get me home, I found I had no cell service. I couldn't get a signal no matter where I stood or pointed the phone. I tried restarting it a couple times to no avail. Fortunately, I've got the Google map of London downloaded to my phone -- with that and a paper tube map, I figured out that I could get the Mildmay line from nearby Kensington Olympia station and it was a quick there (I've never used this station before). As I sat on the train, I fiddled around with my phone, checked umpteen settings, etc., and was beginning to think I'd have to walk to the Vodafone store in the Holloway Road for help. So engrossed was I in the bloody phone that before I knew it I'd gone one stop past Gospel Oak, so got out at Kentish Town West, changed platforms and went back. Somewhere along the walk from Gospel Oak back to my gaff, phone service returned. Hooray! I later found out that it wasn't my phone that was the problem -- Vodafone had a huge outage that lasted many hours and impacted thousands of customers. I doubt I can apply for a credit or rebate due to lack of phone service.

On Tuesday, I took the train from Victoria station to Chichester. This was my first time using my new senior railcard to get 1/3 off on my tickets. When I got to Victoria, I soon found out that my train was delayed -- 45 minutes delayed due to some sort of train malfunction around Horsham. I later learned all about how to apply for "delay repay" online, which was easy peasy. 

In Chichester, I went to the Pallant House Gallery. I had been there in April and really enjoyed the space and the exhibition I saw. This visit was for the exhibition Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists. Once again, Pallant House delivered. Starting around 1900 and going up to the present, there were paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs of artists by artists, many of whom were their friends and/or lovers. Again, the Bloomsbury Bunch were out in full force, painting and having sex with each other. I spent nearly two hours looking at everything. Not that we should judge art exhibitions on this basis, but I'd say this exhibition was very good value for money. 

Nina Hamnett by Roger Fry:

Gilbert and George Pink by Sue Dunkley:

My time in Chichester was rather short as I had gotten there late and I'd booked a 4 pm train back to London, so I had only a bit of time to wander around the charming town, walk along another part of the city wall (Roman and medieval), and wander down to the canal basin. Before getting on the train, I stopped into a caff and bought a huge piece of homemade carrot cake from a lovely lady. I didn't ask, but I suspect she baked it herself. I told her I was getting it for my train journey, so she carefully wrapped it in foil for me. Aw!

Wednesday was a bit lower key. I faffed around in the morning, did some online Pilates, and then met my friend Jen at the Tufnell Park station to accompany her on a walk around the area. Jen is another of my walking tour guide friends and she was working up a Tufnell Park walk that she would offer to punters on a date I wasn't available. She needed to check out a few things before the walk went live, and wanted some feedback on it, so I was happy to tag along as her guinea pig. I learned a lot about how the area developed from a manor house property into the suburb it is now and saw many details that I hadn't noticed in all my rushing around to grocery stores and charity shops. 

In the afternoon, I took the overground to Finchley Road and Frognal, then went back to the Camden Art Centre for the exhibition I'd tried to see last week before it had opened. If I had bothered to read about the current exhibition -- Karimah Ashadu: Tendered -- I would have known that this was going to be a stretch for me. The exhibition is comprised of three videos, about body builders, an abattoir, and a cowboy, all filmed in Nigeria. I'm generally not into video as art, but since I'd come here twice I thought I should stay for the show. I lasted less than a minute for the body builders and the abattoir, but I actually watched the entire video about the cowboy, a sensitive young man who has spent his entire life around horses. 

Although it's easier to get public transport to Tufnell Park from central London than it is to go between Belsize Park and Tufnell Park, that's what I did. I got the bus down to Swiss Cottage, then walked along Eton Avenue and England's Lane to the Belsize Community Library. My mission was to get a library card and check out a book. Unlike the other libraries in the borough of Camden, which require proof of address in the form of a utility bill or rent receipt, the Belsize library is independent. I'd sent them email asking if I could use an envelope from the National Art Fund as my proof of address, and they'd said yes, I could. But all I had to do was fill out a short form and didn't have to produce any proof. I now have a plastic library card!

The post box topper in England's Lane, made by a group of women from the library, now has a seasonal theme "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Thursday morning, I returned to the Barbican (this business of going twice to the same place will be a recurring theme during my autumn stay), this time to the art gallery for Giacometti and Mona Hatoum. This is the second of the Barbican's series of installations of works by Giacometti in "encounters" with a contemporary sculptor, this time the Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum, who now lives in London. I had seen a large exhibition of her work at the White Cube Bermondsey a few years ago and really liked it. Her sculpture deals with displacement, social repression and conflict. I was intrigued by how she encorporated Giacometti's work into her own and showed her pieces in dialogue with his. 

Upon leaving the Barbican, I remembered to stop in to the Barbican Laundrette to take a few photos. 

I then sat in Charterhouse Square to eat my packed lunch before getting on the train at Farringdon. The Elizabeth Line took me swiftly to Stratford (on the eastern side of the 2012 Olympic site), when I switched to the Mildmay Line to go one stop back westward to Hackney Wick. There I met my friend Lesley and we walked across a bridge over the Lee Navigation to the western side of the Olympic site. The building which had housed all the media during the Olympics has now been redeveloped into various offices, light industry, tech businesses, cafes, and now is home to the V&A East Storehouse, where we were headed. 

But first, we stopped into a complex called Here East in which the artist Conrad Shawcross has installed an enormous ropemaking machine. Umbilical, as the installation is called, incorporates 40 interlocking arms topped with bobbins of yarn. Through movements that have something to do with planetary orbits, the arms pull and enterlace yarn until it comes out as rope that's 2-3" in diameter. I don't really understand how it works, but it was really cool to watch. 

And then the V&A Storehouse blew my mind! This is the new facility in which the V&A stores everything that's not on display in one of its museums. Shelving going up three storeys through the vast space, with glass floors separating each level, is full of all kinds of fascinating pieces of material culture. The objects are not organized for display as they would be in the museum, but rather sitting on shelves for people to see or study. Anyone who is interested, for research purposes or just curiosity, can request a particular object to be brought to a study room where they can see it up close. Through the glass floors, you can look down into the conservation rooms where objects are being stabilized or restored. We saw some items of clothing being brought out in archival grey boxes for a student to examine. 

Two of the best things we saw were an entire wood-panelled office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and a 1930s kitchen. This is the kind of place you could come to time and time again, never seeing the same things twice and always finding something new and fascinating. 

After cake and a catch-up in a nearby caff, I took the overground to Hampstead Heath, where I used the Victorian subterranean loo, bought a salad for later at M&S Simply Food, and then walked to my evening event. 

At the Isokon Gallery, I heard a talk by a German architect about the restoration of the Bauhaus building at Dessau. The talks at the Isokon are always interesting, but it's really tough sitting on those backless stools for an hour and a half. Thank goodness they provide a complimentary glass of wine. 

My friends David and Janie took me on another day trip on Friday, this one to Farleys House, the country home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, in East Sussex a bit north of Eastbourne. Not a National Trust or English Heritage home, Farleys is owned and maintained by a private trust that benefits from the copyrights to Lee Miller's work. Lee and Roland's son Antony Penrose is head of the trust and is very hands-on in the running of the house, grounds and gallery. It's a bit more commercial than NT or EH properties, but all the merch is tasteful -- no tat at all. 

The house tour was led by an animated and witty guide who took us through the rooms on the ground floor, telling stories of all the artists who came to visit and whose works hang beside Miller's and Penrose's on the walls. The kitchen, where Lee Miller turned her attention to cooking after giving up her photography career, was so cool -- full of all sorts of mid-century objects and of works by Picasso, a frequent visitor. Likewise the dining room, where a combination of found art and modern art pieces could be seen everywhere we turned. Alas, because of the copyrights, no photography is allowed inside the house so you'll just have to take my word that it's fab. After the tour, we strolled around the garden with various bits of sculpture, ate our packed lunch on an outdoor table, then checked out the gallery and gift shops. 

Farleys House is located in the hamlet of Muddles Green near Chiddingly (you can't make this stuff up), which is basically nowhere. The nearest train station is miles away in Lewes, and bus service from there to Muddles Green is infrequent at best. So, I was very happy that Janie and David were keen to make the journey via hedge-lined, narrow country roads to get there and back. Once we were finally back to civilization in south London, we headed straight to Southey Brewing Co. in Penge, near to where David and Janie live. They brew on site and have a taproom that's very popular with the locals. David's group of mates who get together weekly to maintain the local Cator Park had recently picked bags of hops that grow wild in the park. They turned the hops over to Southey Brewing, who made a special brew of them called Cator Park Fresh Hop 2025. We all had pints and thought it was grand. 

Once home in my attic gaff, I made myself some soup and sat down for a bit of YouTube viewing. One of my favourite content producers is a bloke called John Tweedy, who lives nearby in Kentish Town and posts regular videos about pubs, real ale (especially bitter), wine, walking and wild camping, and occasionally something of local interest. His Friday video, on his Tweedy Misc. channel, was about the Goodison Fountain on Hampstead Heath. The fountain is the head of a chalybeate (iron rich) spring and isn't marked on Google maps. With a few cues from Tweedy, I took up the quest for the fountain as my Saturday challenge. With no rain in the forecast, I scurried over to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market for my usual bread purchases and then headed up the east side of the Heath, past the men's and women's bathing ponds, and around the ancient Caen Wood. I made one wrong turn, then doubled back downhill and suddenly there it was! I was surprised that the small number of people and dogs who I saw nearby took no notice of this spectacular and rare find. It might be the only existing chalybeate spring on the Heath, for goodness sake! And the fountain looks grand. 

When I walked back down the Heath to my gaff to deposit my bread purchases, I had no plan for the afternoon. An hour or so later, the plan emerged: since I would be ending my day in Richmond, and as Vauxhall is sort of halfway there, it made perfect sense that I'd go to the Newport Street Gallery to see the recently-opened exhibition. The gallery is owned by Damien Hirst, whose art I don't really care for, but the gallery space is spectacular and it's fun to go there to see what's on. The current exhibition is Triple Trouble, a mash-up/collaboration between Hirst, Shepard Fairey and Invader. I love Shepard Fairey and Invader, so I put my dislike of Hirst aside. The exhibition was great, full of Shepard Fairey's iconic graphic images and Invader's mosaics. Hirst's contribution of cigarette butts and scalpel blades didn't add anything and could be overlooked. 

Finally, I was back on the tube, headed to Richmond to see a live performance of the podcast The Wittering Whitehalls. I'm a DODL (Day One Dear Listener) to this humorous podcast, featuring Hillary and Michael Whitehall (parents of Jack Whitehall) who answer requests for advice from listeners. I loved gawping at the ornate interior of the Richmond Theatre (Grade II* listed, architect Frank Matcham) from my seat in the front row of the dress circle (first balcony) and the show was just as amusing as I'd hoped.

Sunday started out with some bits of clear sky but it went pear shaped very quickly, bringing drizzle with intermittent downpours the entire day. But that didn't stop me from doing two guided walks. In the morning, I met Jane to explore Mr. Pooter's Holloway. He is the central character in the book Diary of a Nobody -- a man looking to climb the social ladder in 1880-90s Holloway, straight-laced and prudish, but ever trying to make a good joke or pun. Throughout the book, Mr. Pooter has somewhat fraught interactions with people who would have practiced various trades up and down the Holloway Road, including the ironmonger, tailor, etc. It was good fun to try to work out where he and his family lived and shopped during the glory days of Holloway, when you could get anything you wanted right here. 

I next scooted down to Red Lion Square for another event associated with the Bloomsbury Festival. Starting at Conway Hall, the walk explored the Humanist Bloomsbury: Doers, Dreamers and Place Makers. I learned about the various free-thinking individuals and groups that came under the Humanist umbrella -- non-conformists or non-religious, ethical societies, anti-war activists, feminists, artists, writers, labour organizers. Despite the miserable weather, our lovely guide Maddy Goodall held my attention throughout and I now want to learn more about these people. 

I then trudged on through the rain and caught a bus back to Tufnell Park, putting a soggy end to my very full second week. 

Stats:

Monday:

£18 Courtauld Gallery

£4.50 banana cake

£7.82 groceries

£50 top up Oyster card

Japan Foundation - free with Art Pass

Leighton House - free with Art Pass

16,770 steps

6.88 miles

Tuesday:

£12.34 train to Chichester (-£3.10 delay repay)

£7.50 Pallant House Gallery

£3 pain aux raisins

£3.75 carrot cake

16,095 steps

6.62 miles

Wednesday:

£15.20 groceries

£3.20 tea at caff

Camden Art Centre - free for all

18,687 steps

7.71 miles

Thursday:

£5.50 Barbican Gallery

£4.69 groceries

£12 talk at Isokon Gallery (with wine)

V&A Storehouse East - free for all

18,272 steps

7.49 miles

Friday:

Farleys House - a treat from my friends!

9,437 steps

3.89 miles

Saturday:

£7 farmers' market

£12 wine and groceries

£36.64 Richmond Theatre

Newport Street Gallery - free for all

24,571 steps

10.14 miles

Sunday:

£18 Holloway walk

£10 Bloomsbury walk (included donation to Conway Hall)

£1.20 pastel de nata

15,187 steps

6.23 miles