Let's go back in time

Let’s go to Venice and marvel at the view.

Let’s look down narrow canals and at gondolas and colourful houses.

Let’s also look at wider canals with less colourful houses.

Let’s take pictures of other people taking pictures (and let’s also see the guy on the right later in the day again somewhere else in Venice too).

Let’s see a hug from a distance.

Let’s look at shafts of light and at shadows.

Let’s look at the majestic

and the less so.

Let’s look at cool signage and great colour combos.

Let’s walk for ages and ages, through quiet and narrow streets to find the best gelateria in town.

Let’s take the water bus back home to where we’re staying and take in the beautiful architecture on the way.

Let’s walk the last bit and marvel at what someone else’s everyday life looks like.

Let’s go out for dinner later and feel like we’ve traveled back hundreds of years in time.

I’m reading Venice by Jan Morris at the moment (ridiculously well written), so I’m really glad that I can look at the pictures from our trip there in March 2019. Who knows how long it’ll be until we can go abroad again (next year maybe??), so I’m making sure I read my way out of the here, and am grateful for all the trips I’ve ever made in the past, and for the fact that I’m forever taking pictures. Where are you dreaming yourself off to these days?

Among the trees

Flashback exhibition time! Took the Oomster to see the Among the Trees exhibition at the Hayward Gallery back in August last year, where the linking theme between all the artworks was trees. As you entered you were met by this amazing diorama-type installation made out of cardboard. In hindsight I wish I’d spent longer looking at this, but with social distancing rules and a son that walks through exhibitions faster than I do, there wasn’t much time for taking my time, haha.

You know how I’m drawn to silhouettes, right? I spotted this silhouetted couple in front of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s filmed spruce portrait, and somehow instinctively knew that they would kiss - even though they were wearing face masks. In my excitement of watching it happen and getting ready to take the picture, I managed to wobble the camera. After it happened I took another picture - this time pin sharp, but of course, no face mask kiss. It has made me think of how unaccepting we’ve become of less than perfect pictures in the digital age; if I had shot this on film I would’ve been really pleased to have caught it at all (with the right exposure too - wow!). Pre-digital photography, less than perfect images were part of the visual language, and now they’ve been erased for ever. So, rather than posting the sharp photo I’m posting this as a reminder that as life definitely isn’t perfect, photographs needn’t be either.

I won’t be able to give you all the background info or tell you who made what, so you’re just going to have to take these at face value, and just go with the tree theme of all of them. This was my favourite and my take-home piece. Big it was too.

Loved the colours in this one.

And this tree, made out of typewriter type and sheets of paper put together was pretty impressive.

Cool, right?

These wooden posts had been carved back into trees. Bloody brilliant.

And this photo ticked many boxes for me. Tree, window, each window pane a picture frame? Noice.

These little guys were such a bright matt red. My VSCO filter choice here doesn’t do them any justice at all.

A foggy forest in a box?! Yes please. Makes me wonder where all the foggy winter mornings have gone. Is that just a December thing - and very passé by February?

Check out the Oomster. Such a dude now.

If this was a tree how old would it be? Very. Is this picture out of focus? I can’t tell on my screen. If it is I did it on purpose. Ha. Ha.

Let’s go in closer. Hand drawn directly on the wall?! Very cool.

I really liked this painting, painted solely by making textures. In fact, this is the one I’d like to have as my take home piece now, thank you please.

This installation, glowing like a forest fire had just passed through, was Oomoo’s fave. I wince when I think of how this is what our/his future looks like, becoming more widely spread than it is now I mean. Considering life is such a shit show right now due to you-know-what, it feels a bit too intense to think of the massive turd fest that we’ve created that is hanging over the world, forgotten about for the moment, but still very much there. But I’m hopeful, as seeing how quickly science has reacted to Covid, and how we’ve basically all accepted to more or less stay at home for nearly a year to do our bit to help, fighting climate change should be doable in time we have left to avert most of it, and should be far less painful than 2020/21 has been.

Didn't mean to get all serious like that - soz. But you can’t really go to an exhibition about trees without thinking of the environment, innit. Anyway. This tree trunk had been sliced through like pages of a book. You can see it more at the top of the trunk in this picture.

I wonder what the world would have been like had plastic not been invented? We kind of managed ok without it before, right? Hmmmmmm.

So there you have it, a bit of art for you, from the in-between-lockdown-times in 2020. I also want to share a link to the Mauritshaus Museum in the Hague today, where you can walk around virtually in the world’s first online giga pixel museum. For the past week I’ve dipped in and out walking around it (want to eke it out so it lasts longer), and it’s been mind blowing to be able to zoom in such detail on the paintings. To see the actual brush strokes of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the cracks in the paint up close is quite something. It’s felt like the best kind of food for my soul in these endless dark and grey days that’s been hitting us more often than I think is necessary. Like, we get it weather gods - enough already.

Happy Monday

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Aug 2nd 2018

Seriously need some distraction right now. And a bit of silliness. So here’s Oomoo with his cousin, with all eight eyes between them. I bid you a good day!

Resting in peace

Let’s get away from the here and now, shall we? I’m so glad I have so many pictures from last year that I haven’t posted yet, as the days at the moment are so same-y and uneventful. On a balmy late September Sunday, my friend D and I walked over to Highgate Cemetery to go exploring. It’s so odd to think back just a few months back during the pandemic, when compared to now everything felt so relaxed, even though we still had to socially distance. One perk due to Covid was that you were allowed to walk around on the west side of the cemetery on your own, which you otherwise only can visit on a guided tour. D, who seems to have been to most of the interesting places in London retold me the facts she could remember from having walked the tour years ago.

The west side is more hilly and wild, and is the oldest part, opened in 1839. It’s also the most prestigious part to be buried in. If you want to read more about the cemetery’s interesting history, click here.

We walked around with a map, and decided on a route. I’m posting the order of what we saw on the way.

It was so interesting to see the difference in styles of the grave stones. I found Lucian Freud’s very understated and elegant.

The Egyptian Style was very popular in the 1800’s, and walking up Egyptian Avenue felt like something straight out of Indiana Jones or Tombraider. Not surprisingly lots of films have been shot here.

Loved the font and the colours on this tomb.

And how apt are these words for EXACTLY RIGHT NOW?! It’s a bastardised stanza from Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. 54. I’m not even sure I read what it said when I took the picture, I just liked the font and the placing of the text. Kind of nicer to see the words now, and take them in properly.

This circular vault area is called the Circle of Lebanon, as when the cemetery was built, there was an old Lebanese cedar tree in situ already, and they decided to keep and build around it.

Sadly it was deemed unsafe to keep in place as it had completely rotted inside, so it came down in 2019, and a new one was planted in its place, which you can see in the middle of this picture. Not quite the same, but give it time.

The catacombs section was closed which was a shame. It would have been very interesting to have seen inside.

Different styles of headstones. Patrick Caulfield’s DEAD one has to be the best one ever. Straight to the point, no messing about.

Crossing the road and entering the east side, the atmosphere changed significantly. Less wild and more tightly packed.

And much flatter with wider avenues. Felt a bit like a car park compared to the west side.

No cemetery is complete without a cat, right? Looking at these pictures I’m transported back to what was such a chill and interesting afternoon, and I can feel the summer heat from that day all over again. It’s actually still open, even in lockdown, and it would be cool to see what the atmosphere there is like in the middle of winter. Let’s see if I can can get my lazy arse over there before spring.