Some kind of magic

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It feels like it’s been a while since there’s been an awe-inspiring installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. In fact, maybe it’s been years or maybe even a decade. Well, El Anatsui’s Behind the Red Moon is a definite must-see. In fact, I’d like to go back on a sunny day to see how different it might look - can it glimmer even more than this? I hope you can sense the scale of these, as they’re absolutely huge. I’ve seen Anatsui’s work before, but not on this scale. To explain what these are made out of, I’ve copied and pasted this from his website: Anatsui is well-known for large scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of aluminium bottle caps sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. These intricate works, which can grow to be massive in scale, are luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. He leaves the installations open and encourages the works to take new forms every time they are installed. Mind blowing. It’s on until April 14th 2024, so if you like what you see and you happen to be in town before then, well you know the drill. Go.

The space in between

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I’ve had this month’s theme in my head for years. I’ve noticed the space between buildings, in particular shops, as being a kind of strange no man’s land of ugliness, a space of unsightly cables and sometimes traces of what was before. I took all of these on a walk at the beginning of October, on my way to the shops in my neighbourhood where I had some errands to run. Turns out that was lucky, as I ended up being ill and housebound for three weeks and so couldn’t go out looking for more. It’s not as pretty a theme as red dresses, but it made me see things I’ve never seen before, like all the stickers for shutters or shutter repairs. Who knew? I also can’t believe the lazy dog owner in the third pic, who rather than find a bin, tucked a bag of dog poo behind the pipes on the wall. I shall keep paying attention to these in-between spaces, and also see what they look like in different countries. This is the sort of weirdness that I find interesting 😂

A shared day

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The 27th of October has since 1983 always been my sister’s birthday, but as of last year, it’s also the date of when our godfather died. I can’t think of a better photograph to embody this new duality, which I took at some point in the 90’s. My sister is watching TV in the his front room, while he stands in the kitchen, holding a lightbulb delicately in his hand. They’re together, yet apart, which I guess is a bit like how we live on with our loved ones who are no longer with us.

My godfather was a keen amateur photographer, with a great selection of cameras and lenses that he gave me while he was still alive, and I remember that on this particular roll of film I was trying out my newly gifted 17mm lens. I had never shot with a lens as wide before or afterwards, but if I remember correctly there’s not one dud on that whole roll. The wider perspective gave me new eyes and everything looked different, better.

I’ve been watching the calendar creep closer to this first anniversary with a bit of trepidation, but dipping into Thich Nhat Hanh’s “How to live when a loved one dies” yesterday really helped me feel less sad. Thanks for having been such a great part of my life dear Guffar*; I hope you can feel all of my love and gratitude somehow ❤️

* my incorrect pronunciation of gudfar (godfather in Swedish) when I was a kid