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Wet day today. It was basically raining, and pretty heavily at times, all day long. While this may sound typical of London it is not in keeping with our weather as of late. My feet were soaked about 10 minutes after venturing outside, and remained that way all day.
Went for a short run in Regent's Park this morning. There is still work being done to disassemble the tent from the Frieze Art Fair (which ended over a week ago).
Class today consisted of gallery visits throughout the West End. I enjoyed this a lot.
The first thing we went to was 'The Clock' by Christian Marclay at the White Cube Gallery. This was quite fascinating. It is a video that has clips from movies from around the world, all dealing with the concept of time. Some of the clips were if clocks, people looking at their watches, talking about meeting times, waiting, being impatient etc. It has a 24 hour circuit, and on Thursdays and Fridays the gallery stays open all day so all parts can be viewed. The video is structured in a way so the clips are ordered sequentially by time. The time in the video is synced with the time in Which the gallery exists. It is so cool and interesting. The setting is also quite nice. Rather than a room with no seating, or benches like in most museums, this was in a theatre setting. There were comfy couches throughout the dark room and the Walls and floor were soft, so even with a full house you could be comfortable. It was so interesting an engaging that you forget where you are and just want to keep watching. I may go back at different a different time to see other parts of it.
The next exhibit we saw was British Punk Pop Art at Haunch of Venison. This was mostly posters, with some other propaganda, that were collected by Toby Mott starting when he was 13. A large portion of the pieces were Sex Pistols advertisements (God Save The Queen) with a bunch also from Siouxsie and the Banshees along with other punk groups. There was also a section on the Queen's Silver Jubilee (1977) and another about wars and terrorism (most about Nazis and the IRA).
The last gallery housed a collection of mainly textile works, by Lousie Bourgeois. I really liked this. Most of the pieces were relatively small, maybe 25" x 25" approximately, and were combinations of different colours and textures of fabric as well as some beads, thread and metal. These pieces (by far the majority) were contrasted by a stuffed black male figure without a head and a cage which had a variety of objects hanging in it, including translucent fabric, chains, small human figures resembling rubber chickens, and a pile of stones topped with fur. It was very strange but interesting all the same.
After class I made my way back to the flat stopping at Ben's Cookies for a fabulous hot chocolate and triple chocolate chunk cookie. Ben's makes large, incredibly moist and soft cookies which are served so warm that the insides are gooey and melting. It was divine and just what I needed on this very wet day.
I fell asleep writing in my journal at around 5:30. After this impromptu nap I had some dinner and spent the evening doing research for my trips, primarily Dublin.
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