Those people following me on Twitter will probably have noticed how lacklustre I've been feeling this past week. I'd put it partly down to the weather, even though the fact that summer seems to be over actually didn't come as a surprise to me. The make-up induced allergy that caused my face to painfully erupt certainly hasn't helped me into a sunshiney mood, mind you (the dual curse of sensitive skin and psoriasis is not much fun I can tell you).
Despite that, and my whinging about it on Twitter, there were a couple of good cultural points in the last week. On Tuesday I got a text from Pedro who had a spare ticket to the Martin Parr talk that night (another event from the London Literature Festival, like the Buzz Aldrin one I went to a couple of weekends ago). I killed a couple of hours beforehand by wandering around Southwark taking photos, but hated almost all of the results, which was a bit annoying. The monochrome light really didn't help, as I had to keep remembering to switch exposure and white balance and when I forgot to do so (which was most of the time), none of the pictures came out properly — white parts are over-exposed and dark areas are completely obscured.
Before the talk, I popped into the National Theatre to have a look at the the Press Photographers' Year exhibition. Annoyingly, the photos are displayed so small on the website that you lose a lot of the detail that makes them good, so I definitely recommend having a look at the exhibition itself — it's on 'til the end of August. It was interesting though; as someone who spends a lot of time on Flickr, I couldn't help but notice how much better some of the amateur photographers on there can be sometimes . Several times over I found myself thinking I'd already seen the same thing done better and more strikingly on Flickr, although in many cases the press photographers can get closer to some amazing subjects. It was also quite a lot fun watching the reactions of some of the other people looking at the photos, although the two ladies of a certain age talking loudly about all the celebrities they recognised were annoying as hell.
Also annoying, especially for Pedro, was that he ended up having to work late and was unable to attend Martin Parr's talk, which on the whole was pretty good. Since he was talking about his recent book, Parrworld (also the subject of a current exhibition), I'd already heard some of it, having been to the launch last year. This time, though, instead of just talking about his collection of Saddam Hussein watches, or his Margaret Thatcher memorabilia, he also talked quite a bit about his collection of photography books, which was really interesting; forming a bit of a history of the artform. I'd be really interested in hearing speak more about that aspect of photography in greater detail, because he didn't just focus on the well-known names, but talked about people I'd never heard of before. He also showed a few photos from his upcoming book, Luxury, but I've already seen a few of them and I still think that his strongest work was the stuff he did in the late 80s — although some of the stuff that's on the Magnum blog (which he didn't show at the talk) is also bloody brilliant.
Went to a couple of other small exhibitions this week, too. Popped into the NPG, ostensibly to see the BP Portrait Award but only managed to get around half of it because it was too crowded, as it always is. From what I could see, there was again a lot of photo-realism, or at least portraits that were too obviously based off photo-reference. I don't always mind that style of painting, but in most cases I found myself thinking that it would have been just as strong an image if it had been left as a photo and not converted into paint. I may go back and try and have a better look, if it's not too crowded, but to be honest I've had the same opinion re: too much photo-realism for the last few years, so I don't think it'll change.
Having given up on the Portrait Award show, I was pleasantly surprised to come across the Fabiola exhibit, because it's just exactly the kind of thing that tickles my fancy. Not only do the two rooms filled with similar images look great from afar, they reward closer attention, as you start to see all the differences and unique qualities of each portrait. Well worth a look if you're passing by the NPG.
On Friday I popped into the V&A with the intention of saying a quick hello to my friend Kaz Rubins, who's just started her residency as in-house artist. Whilst I was there, several people came by, including Karrie Fransman, Mark Stafford, Steve Marchant, Ian Rakoff (curator of the Rakoff Collection) and The Man At The Crossroads, Paul Gravett, and we ended up having a quick comics jam, doing a panel each, for Kaz's guestbook. I also had a nice chat with Mary Butcher, the in-house basketry designer, whose guestbook currently takes the form of a long thin strip of weaving material for people to sign, which will be woven into a basket when the residency is over. That's such a lovely idea! She also has a great selection of woven items such as bowls and kettle descalers to demonstrate that it's not just baskets that use the technique.
Karrie and I went off to have a look at the Telling Tales exhibition, which is really good. It's full of 3D design work inspired by fairy tales and other forms of literature. Some of the furniture is a bit too conceptual to be comfortable, but Tord Boontje's fig tree wardrobe and Wieki Somers' boat bathtub are both fantastic (in all senses of the word) and functional.
After that, we ended up in the Raphael Room, watching a mini-retrospective fashion show of Giles Deacon's designs from the last five years. We had fun snarking about the models with poor posture and how badly some of the clothes had been cut. The clothes weren't as radical as we'd been led to believe, either, and we agreed that they'd have been much more radical if they'd been designed for women who were size 20 instead of size 6. There were a couple of outlandishly fun outfits though, like the hairy egg dress, or the one with the helmet that made the model look like a SMASH robot in fetishwear (see some pics here), and there were a few that were undeniably attractive, especially if you could make a sweeping entrance down a grand staircase. But how often does one get to do that?
