The rest of my week's holiday in London with Ross included a number of cultural events.
On Friday, I went down to Brixton Art Gallery to observe Ross's piece Their Story on display. That was good. There were a number of very favourable comments written in the Gallery's visitors book.
After a chug around some book, CD and video stores, I met up with Chris, John and Martin for an evening of alcohol and badinage.
Thursday gave us Eastenders and the much bruited shooting of Phil Mitchell. For the record, I think that Sheila Handcock's character did it. She's not mentioned in any of the press so it's a perfect surprise. Her character is likely to die any way. Phil Mitchell was giving her all the background gossip about her son and his new bride. Whilst she wanted the info, she won't have liked this nasty man dishing her son even though she was pretending otherwise. East End mum's support their sons.
Wednesday took us to Tate Modern and Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis.
The aim is to explore the relationships between cultural creativity and the Metropolis, by focusing on nine cities from around the world at specific moments during the 20th century. I liked the area devoted to Bombay/Mumbai best, even though I probably would not want to visit there. I liked the work of Bhupen Khakhar and, in particular, the paintings which explored his own sexual identity through the portrayal of homoerotic and transvestite subject matter. The Old man with Three Penises was great. I also liked the video installation Hamletmachine by Nalini Malani. I've seen many such installations and this was by far and away the best use of projection, video, sound and sculpture that I have seen. Robert and Tom were talking about extending their piece by using multi-media. I really think that they should see this as a source of good ideas.
I also very much liked the Vienna rooms and in particular the frank approach to aspects of sexuality evident in the paintings of Egon Schiele. They still have the power to disturb after almost a century. Particularly affecting was a self portrait in a black cloak of the artist masturbating. Not surprisingly, Schiele was imprisoned for a few days in 1912 on pornography charges, when the authorities of a small town near Vienna, where he was staying, took exception to his drawings.
I sort of liked the Lagos room as well because I knew so little about the culture there. I'd heard of Wole Soyinka from the 70s when his plays were performed at the Royal Court in London and much talked about in the media. I honestly thought he was from southern Africa rather than Nigeria. And I'd never heard of the Mbari Writers and Artists Club. And I didn't know that the colonial centre of Lagos was on an island until I saw the map in the middle of the room. Ross and I bought a book entitled Unthinking Eurocentrism from the exhibition bookshop. It looks good.
I quite liked the Rio room (I didn't know that bossa nova meant New Wave), felt very at home in the Paris rooms because all of the work was so familiar even if it wasn't though I particularly liked the photographs of Nijinsky (thighs like tree trunks, my dear, and the face of a faun - hem) and the Moscow rooms were brutal but the poster art was splendid.
Overall I didn't like the New York, Tokyo and London areas. The work was vapid.
Still, splendid day out and fab meal in the café. Very well marshalled by a young queen. And the food was excellent.
And the week came to an end with the fat lady singing.
My God, Jane Eaglen is good.
I've seen this production before. I'd heard Sharon Sweet as a high powered, high volume, beautifully sung Turandot. Jane was as good and better, more expressive, lighter of tone, the whole thing brilliantly executed. We met Roland there, which was a pleasant surprise and he enjoyed it all too. I also had another flashback to Adrian although I had completely forgotten that I had written the earlier piece and was going to write the same information all over again.
Sunday morning I was off again driving north. My car really likes these long journeys at a steady pace as opposed to the stopping and starting of rush hour traffic. Old cars don't like that sort of thing.