Up and Down (Artistically of course!)

This has been a very up and down week both emotionally, mentally and artisictcally!

The mental bit comes from work (which is hectic but good), the emotional stuff stems from here…

Artistically it’s been a very cultured week for me. It started with Richard and I attending the Ai Weiwei grand opening of his Porcelain Sunflower Seed Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. We had a fantastic evening which as you can see from the video truly allowed us to immerse ourselves with the exhibition.

Little did I know this was about to change in the week.

There were a lot of people walking on the exhibit on the night but this was encouraged – it was also encouraged to connect with the artist via Twitter.

My colleagues wanted to experience the show for themselves so we took a trip over there yesterday (the Tate Modern is a 10 minute walk from our office). When we got there we encountered the expected crowds, what we didn’t expect was the exhibition to be completely cordoned off.

At first glance it looked like they were simply tidying up the exhibit but my suspicions were raised when I saw the staff had masks on. Once we tracked down a member of staff we found out that the exhibit was in fact closed for the day.

It turns out that it is now closed until further notice. Neither the artist, the 15,000 people who created the seeds nor the Tate Modern Curator had considered the effect of having thousands of pairs of feet trampling over the sunflower seeds.

Yesterday we were told they were wearing down too quickly, today the papers report that it’s due to excess amounts of porcelain dust being generated. To be honest I don’t want to inhale that therefore I am glad they have taken this step.

It is a real shame though as it is a truly interactive experience and I hope they find a solution (it’s there until May 2011!).

It did allow me to capture the exhibit in completely different manner from Monday evening.

Monday:

Wednesday:

Whilst on the walk to the Tate Modern we saw a crowd on the beach outside – they were cheering a boat which was trying to beach itself – little did we know this was another art event in London regarding The Walking Boat. Apparently it was meant to come up onto the beach and walk across the sad – sadly it didn’t make it. Grounding itself on the shore line!

To round off my week of culture I took a walk to Hoopers Gallery today to see the winners and runners-up of this years British Wildlife Photography Contest. As you know I have a thing for photography so this was right up my street (especially as it currently resides in a gallery fairly close to my office!).

I was absolutely blown away by the standard of the images on display and all of them deserved their first place or highly commended commendations.

The overall winner was stunning photo of a wave crashing around a Herring Gull, captured on the Isle of Scilly.

It was great to see such diversity in the photos, the choice of subject, locations and the equipment used. In most cases people seemed to be using Canon EOS’ but I was pleasantly surprised that the winner of the Under Age category was snapped on a Fuji Finepix (and it was a rather illuminating macro shot of a beetle on a leaf).

The photography competition has given me plenty of inspiration and ideas, I just need to get out and about with the PEN now!

As you can see it’s been a very packed week, regardless of minor dramas and work. I am not sure I have the energy to do this every week though!