Gallery/Museum Visits

When I was in London at the beginning of this week I had some free time on the Tuesday morning before going to Talking Lear.  Accordingly I decided to visit a gallery/museum or two.  elfbert recommended the Saatchi Gallery, which is just off the Kings Road.  I'd never been before, so I thought it would be worth going for that reason if no other.  I have to admit to not being a particular fan of modern art, but then there are only some strands of classical art I like as well, so perhaps it would be true to say that I'm quite particular in the sort of art I do like.  The Body Language exhibition was interesting, although some of the paintings left me wondering 'but why?'  The one picture that particularly struck me was Walking with Vito by Henry Taylor.

Having finished walking round the Saatchi Gallery I decided to move onto the V&A, because it was only one stop on the tube and I like the V&A.  With limited time I headed for the East Asian galleries, because I love wandering around the items from China and Japan.  I suppose they could be termed my museum equivalent of comfort food.  There was a junior school group looking round at the same time and at one point one young girl, looking at a group of three statuettes, one of which was headless, said "ooh, 'e's lost 'is 'ead".  There was a large document which initially looked as if it was written in Chinese characters, but on reading the description and looking more closely the artist had used English words, but combined the letters to resemble Chinese.  I was fascinated and started spotting words like "the" and "peaches".  As I was doing so, one of the teachers from the school came up and told her group that if they could read Chinese they would know what it said.  I explained to her what I'd discovered and pointed out one of the words to the group, who were as fascinated as I was and came to inspect it more closely, one of the girls chatting to me about what she could see.  I love the enthusiasm that kids of that age have.

Before I left the museum I went to look at the short listed entries for the Jameel Prize 3, which is a competition for artists and designers who are directly inspired by sources rooted in the Islamic tradition.  Inevitably some of the short listed entries did not appeal to me for various reasons, but the two that I particularly liked were the beautiful silk textiles of Rahul Jain made in a workshop in Varanasi in India on drawlooms, at which local Muslim weavers work in pairs; and Florie Salnot's Plastic Gold project creating necklaces and bracelets.  The work is done by Sahrawi women who live in refugee camps at desert sites in Algeria, using hot sand, simple tools and spray paint.

Promotions (various) and writing in general

Apologies flist for the second post in a day, but if I don't get this done now another week will have flown past without me catching my breathe.

My SmallFandomBigBang is back from one beta, so I really should go through it, but I've got plenty of time.  If any artists are interested, the Artist Claiming Post is still open.

I've just signed up for the ACDHolmes Fanworks Exchange which is always good fun.

And I'm looking at the Wall of Love prompts for Valentine's Day for the Lewis fandom with interest.

In addition I need to finish my picfor1000 by the end of this month, which has got to the point where Lewis has said "But why?" and I'm saying "Well, I don't know.  Aren't you the detective?"  Hathaway meanwhile is remaining stubbornly silent and refusing to get out of the car.

So of course it's at this point that my muse decides to use one of the characters I created for the latest writing meme to produce over 3,000 words for what appears to be the first chapter of a long story.  Brilliant!

And tomorrow I need to speak for about five minutes in front of the deanery synod because the curate's gone sick.