Last week I went to a preview of a great exhibition of Hypercomics, which has filled Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery with magical mystery and multi-directional narrative. There are strange deer-like creatures dancing on windows, blood-red masks, choose-your-own-adventure comic strips, and a comical-medical library of London, full of fake books with titles like Interesting Awning Eyelids of the Ritz Hotel And Like Edifices or Cough Cough Cough: Bus Tales.

Each floor of the gallery features a different artist working to tell stories in a completely different way, starting with Warren Pleece's animation on the ground floor, and moving upstairs via Daniel Merlin Goodbrey's multi-directional comic strips, and Dave McKeans multi-media installation, up to Adam Dant's work on the top floor. It's a great demonstration of the many different ways words and imagery can combine to tell a story.

There are also a series of outsize comics panels down in the shelter by the lake, featuring various takes by several artists, on the mythical Battersea Park Free Festival, which may or may not have actually taken place in 1974.

Here are some more photos from the night. First up here's Ed Hillyer, Warren Pleece, Woodrow Phoenix and Etienne Gilfillan on the top floor, looking over Dave McKean's installation. Ed and I ended up having a rather disgusting conversation about gallstones, which was spurred on by some of the titles of the books in Adam Dant's Doctor London installation, including discussing whether or not the removal of a gallstone was what killed Samuel Pepys. (Actually, Pepys had kidney stones, but we got them mixed up, although the conversation so disgusted us that neither of us wanted to pursue it.)

Here's Dave McKean. I was taking this picture for the juxtaposition of the two bottles when I realised he was standing behind his sculpture. (This narrative was a bit of a fiddle to follow!)

Here's Sarah McIntyre looking through one of the windows.

The windows have pictures on them which line up with the trees outside if you stand in the right place.

I'm going to have to go back and give all the stories the time and attention they deserve. Fortunately, I already have plans to go back this Sunday, because it's the day of the summer Comiket, and the list of exhibitors looks fantastic. See you there?

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?

Anyway, it's on for another ten days, so if you're in the area, pop in to have one of the nice brownies and a look at some nice photos!

Another of my photos was included in the recent book, This Is Not A Polaroid, which is for sale on Blurb. All the images were created with the Poladroid software, and there are some great pictures in the book, so check it out. Maybe even buy a copy.

Some of my photos and blog-posts have also been included in another book for sale on Blurb, The Little Book of Bookcamp, along with loads of other stuff from other people who attended January's Bookcamp and sister event, the inaugural Papercamp. There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around from both events, so the book looks like it's worth a read.

What's that got to do with Japanese monsters, I hear you ask. Well, the day we were there it was also the press day for the Utagawa Kuniyoshi exhibition which opened this month. I'd read something about this last year, thought to myself it looked great, and forgot all about it, but browsing through the postcards that were on sale, I can't wait to see it. No doubt fans of Rumiko Takahashi's Inu-Yasha and Hiyao Miyazaki's Spirited Away will appreciate them especially!

About ten years ago I went to a great exhibition of beautiful Hiroshige prints in San Francisco, but this one looks to be even better, because it's full of even more fantastical creatures. There was a postcard of Octopus men wearing suits that caught my eye immediately, because it was so odd for the time period, pre-empting surrealism by a good 100 years or thereabouts. I can't wait to see the original. I'm just hoping that this time the exhibition is better displayed.

In the meantime, you should definitely take a look at the Kuniyoshi Project, which is a great collection of images, although I do wish it was easier to find things on it. I couldn't find the Octopusman I mentioned above, but I did find some astounding images of Tanuki and his enormous balls here and here. I think my favourite is the one where tanuki's knocked out a giant catfish with his balls.

See also: Will's post on Kuniyoshi at a Journey 'Round My Skull and a post from Paul K on monsters of the Edo period. (Incidentally, if you're not regularly reading both these blogs, you really ought to be. There's been some especially astounding imagery posted on A Journey 'Round My Skull in the last month. So much, in fact, that I intended to do a proper blog post about it to make sure no one missed it, but for now I'll make do with mentioning it here. Just go and see for yourselves!)

On New Year's Day, I went to see Aime Maeght & His Artists at the Royal Academy, which I would be recommending to you all if it hadn't closed on January 2nd. It was pretty good, though, with rooms organised by complementary artist pairs: Bonnard and Matisse; Miró and Calder; Braque and Giacometti. My favourite was the Miró and Calder room, which was full of exuberant colours and shapes, designed with humour and playfulness. It was a very uplifting thing to see on such a grey, cold day, and the two artists complemented each other very well.

There was also some film footage of the artists at work, and I was fascinated to see how considered and meticulous Giacometti was. His drawings look so effortlessly spontaneous and almost slapdash, but in fact he took his time working out exactly where each line would go. Discovering that was quite a revelation, and a new way to think about working. It's actually quite hard to take a long time to make something look effortless and still good.

In contrast to that, the following day I went to the Osbert Lancaster exhibition, which I really enjoyed, despite the fact that it was badly hung and the picture captions were really confusing, and recommend it if you're in the Bond Street area in the next week (it finishes on January 11th). I'm not sure how many others will appreciate the dated digs at moneyed establishment (which Lancaster was himself a member of), but fortunately there's more to the show than that. I particularly liked his elegant book jacket designs, which show off his skilled draughtsmanship, and wonderful use of colour and composition; and his witty illustrations of architectural design throughout the ages should be seen by anyone who has an interest in the urban environment (and his description of "Stockbrokers Tudor" is so much better than "mock Tudor"). There are also some brilliantly funny pastiches of portrait styles throughout the ages (his take on Cranach had me giggling particularly loudly), and some charming paintings of Egypt and Europe. It was fascinating to see the clever way he used the texture of the paper to create textures of buildings, which is something you never properly see in reproduction.

I was quite surprised that the exhibition was at the Wallace Collection (somewhere I'd been meaning to visit for years), as it seemed to be more suitable for somewhere like the Cartoon Museum, but in fact it was perfectly at home. Most of the people looking at the pictures looked as though they could have stepped off the page, and if Paul hadn't been so hungry, we would have loved to have stopped for a cream tea in the delightfully pink and posh tea room, and had a proper look around the rest of the House afterwards. Something to save for a rainy day, I guess.

We had quick, filling nosh-up at Bodean's, which is an okay but not brilliant American-style BBQ sandwich place, that massively overcharged me £2.50 (TWO! POUNDS! FIFTY!) for one regular can of non-imported ginger beer. And sadly I have to knock them off my list of potential places that do proper hash browns because they don't (they don't even serve the frozen potato cakes that people usually serve in place of proper hash browns). Nowhere does proper hash browns in London, so far as I can tell. Getting hushpuppies in London is even harder, but I started craving them in Bodean's and now I must find them!

We also took a look at the new Photographers' Gallery, the ground floor, anyway. The current Soho Nights exhibition is tiny but really interesting, and with some fantastic photos. It was fascinating to see Slim Hewitt's photos of people dancing to jazz in the 50s, because the women's clothes and hairstyles could have come from last year. The only thing that really dated the pictures was the men's hairstyles, in particular that floppy-fringed one that I always associate with Ian Carmichael in the film of Lucky Jim (see pic). There are also some brilliant candid photos by Ken Russell, which capture people in unintentionally hilarious poses, as they try to dance in a tiny club so crowded they can only hand-jive. (There's a good post about this over at History is made at night).

The other thing that interested me was a series of pictures which accompanied an article about Soho's Little France, which mainly congregated around one pub, called the York Minster, now more famously known as The French House (which has some nice photos on its website). Anyway, it's a fascinating little exhibition which really demonstrates that it's a subject which deserves to be in a bigger space, with a more in-depth overview. Maybe someone will curate one, one day.

After that, on to the original Amato in Old Compton Street (not the johnny-come-lately branch in Charlotte Street), because I've had a crazy craving for some of their insanely rich and almost hazelnutty hot chocolate, but their machine is still out of order, and will be for about a month, according to the waitress. Oh noes! Where do I go to satisfy that craving now?¹ But chocolate disappointment was smoothed away by the unexpected pleasure of bumping into Gaetan and his lovely fiancee (who is also called Anna). We were soon joined by Billy and had a very nice chat about Turbine Hall installations, pizza toppings, wedding cakes, wine tours and other cultural things, before they went off to the theatre and the three who were left went to The Red Lion in Duke of York Street, which one of my favourite central London pubs. It's tiny, but fabulous; full of Victorian mirrors, great real ale and St James' toffs. Real character.

¹ I did try the Old Compton Street branch of French chain Paul a few days ago, but it's bloody expensive and it certainly wasn't hot — it was lukewarm in fact, and if I hadn't bought it as a takeaway en route to somewhere else I would have complained, but I couldn't, so I complain here. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.