London, Day #15

Friday

Today I went to Bath all by myself!

I had the most amazing time in the first half of the day. I started out by getting off the train (still with laringitis by the way) and finding my way towards the Roman Baths! They are sort of tucked into the center of the town, so not the easiest things to find (but of course once I found them I walked past them about five or six times for the rest of the day).

I will preface my entry to the baths by saying that I read a book published in 1978 about Bath on my train ride, and so I knew a lot of information about the excavations, pieces they found, and where they fit together on the site, how the site was structured, etc. There is little information that has surfaced since 1978. The admission to the museum included an audio tour, which I tried but soon neglected as I wanted to concentrate more on the artifacts and the water than the audio commentary. The Baths themselves were quite interesting, and I really enjoyed walking around. I was there before noon (when several tour groups every day are scheduled to arrive) so it was not too crowded. I think that just being in a piece of architecture that is so old and still beautiful and mostly standing is really an amazing feeling, and it put a smile on my face.

After the Bath I stumbled upon an art store, and of course I went in, and instantly found the ruler I have been searching for.... for over a year! In Bath! Of all places! So I bought it and moved along to the Postal Museum. Bath is the town where the postal service originated, and in the basement of their post office they have a historical museum with artifacts and the like about the beginnings of the royal post! It was very interesting, and the best thing was they let you perforate a sheet of fake stamps that you can take with you!

Then guess what I found? A store entirely dedicated to kitchenware? Yes! It was marvelous and made the smile on my face even larger (now you must remember that I have laringitis). I was the mute woman walking through the store with a smile from ear to ear. I had the staff coming up to me asking if I was alright, rather than if I needed help. It was like heaven. I could have slept there. Even under the knives I would have been comfortable because they were beautiful knives!

Then I went in search of what used to be a bookbinding museum. I found it. It is now an antiquarian bookstore, so I browsed around at the £6,500 books they had on the shelves. I wandered around again until I found Sally Lunn's, the oldest house in Bath. I had lunch there, smoked salmon on a Sally Lunn Bun (a recipe from the 17th century at least). It indeed was a good bun, kind of just like a nice soft bread. They also had a small museum that just showed what the kitchen looked like (in the basement) etc.

After lunch I walked up to the Jane Austen Centre, but I did not go further than the gift shop, because I paid, what I considered to be, too much for my lunch and didn't need to run up an even greater tab by looking at this house for £6. I then walked to the Royal Crescent, a really beautiful piece of architecture, and I proceeded to relax in the park there and read some essays by Woody Allen. It was indeed a pleasant afternoon. By the time I was finished it was just about 4 o'clock. I went to Topshop (a clothing store that has many locations in London) because I figured the one in Bath was probably not nearly as crowded as the one on Oxford Street in London, and I bought a cute blue blazer on sale for £54 less than it's original price. After that I was done, and it was nearly 4:30 when I realized that I had another 4 hours before I could use my train ticket to get back to London.

Speechless and alone I wandered the streets of Bath, slowly becoming more upset at myself for not buying an open return ticket for a slightly higher price. I sat in a cafe and had three cups of green tea, and struggled to skype with my mother using my phone and my lack of voice. I then ate dinner at a Thai restaurant called "Mai Thai," where even getting a table for 1 at 6:30 meant you had to be gone by 7:45. So I ate my salty noodles (unhappy that they were salty) and then read more Woody Allen in the train station. Of course the stories I stumbled upon were not as funny as the ones I had been happily reading in the Royal Crescent Park.

Now if you don't want to be in my even sadder state of mind, I suggest you stop reading here.

Finally 8:43 came around and my train arrived. My reserved seat, however, was not reserved, and was instead occupied by three burly, drunk, rugby fans. I sat nearby, thinking that when my ticket was eventually checked, I would need to be in the right part of the train. That was stupid as these drunken old men decided it would be fun if they yelled profane words at the tops of their lungs (well I guess you could say more profane words for body parts like "tits" and "arse"). It was quite rude, and horrid. Finally the lads passed out when a baby started to cry, making the audible portion of the train ride a true gemstone amongst loud trains. To add to my misery, the train was delayed 30 minutes. By the time I arrived at Paddington station, I practically ran off the train (not wanting to be present for the awakening of the drunks) to the tube station. Once I was on the tube I tried to laugh it all off, but instead ended up with the randomest of bloody noses.

Miserable, I took a £5 cab ride to my house, where all the lights were turned off and so thank goodness my keys are attached to a flashlight or else I would have truly cried (well I did cry once I got upstairs and into the comfort of my bed).

I promise you that Saturday was a much better day (even though the first half of Friday was wonderful) and I will write about it once Sunday is also finished.

xooxoxoxoxoxoxo

Photos of Bath and the other portions of my trip as well.

You can also see photos of my 21 year old teddy bear on her blog as she visits many places in London alongside me.

London, Day #14

Thursday

Today turned out to also be an odd day just because of the strike that happened in London on Thursday. As I had mentioned last Thursday (or at least I hope I mentioned) on Thursdays we are split into two groups, one group meets in the morning and the other group meets in the afternoon. I am in the afternoon group, so I slept in.

When I arrived, on time, we had a lecture on female artists in France. I was quite unimpressed with the lecture style of our guest lecturer who repeatedly said that she didn't want to spend a lot of time on Louise Bourgeois, but ended up showing us the most work by her. Her lecture mostly spiraled downward when she began discussing the performance art tactics of Gina Pane (very masochistic if you ask me and frankly not worth discussing here, you can look her up on your own if you want to but MOM DON'T DO IT BECAUSE YOU WILL VOMIT).

Afterwards we were supposed to have a lecture by another visiting lecturer, but the woman was on strike, and so we went to see the new Murakami works at the Gagosian. I will mention to you now that at this point I have laringitis and can no longer speak, and what does our class do? Go to an exhibit by a contemporary Japanese artist who references traditional Japanese art like crazy, a topic that I can speak on quite well. Yet I cannot speak. My professor, funny as he is, decides to make a joke of my inability to speak by asking for my opinion on works of art and jokingly states that I will be singing Karaoke for everyone after class. So I stood in this gallery, full of references to traditional Japanese art, listening to my fellow students who have not just completed a class on Japanese painting and printmaking, guess at the motives of the artist. It was extremely frustrating, but I managed to write down some of my ideas on paper and share them with the class. Afterwards (since we were so far away from class) the afternoon group went to a cafe to discuss the exhibits we were to see for our homework (that I wrote about earlier, The Minimal Gesture and the Ai Weiwei pieces at the Lisson Gallery).

After enduring all of that I just went home, ate dinner, and went to sleep, as not being able to speak is extremely exhausting.

xoxo

London, Day #13

Sorry for the delay.

Wednesday

Today was a rather odd day as we spent the entire day traveling. We met in Camden to go to the Camden Arts Centre to see two exhibits there. The first was works by the artist Christine Berland called "Cast From Nature." Two of the pieces were cast from other casts that were cast from corpses in the shape of Jesus from the well known Pietà Sculpture by Michelangelo. One was resting on its back while the other was upside down on its stomach. They were the same sculpture (twice) but looked very different just based on their placement. I found the works to be interesting in concept, but difficult to look at because you could see bone structure and facial features that were really quite sickening. The third piece in the room was a long drapery that was more interesting to me than the other two pieces. The drapery hung from one end of the room to the other, and I was curious as to how they even got it through the small set of doors at the entrance. Here is an image of the entire space (including the bodies).

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The second exhibit was just down the hall and it featured the work of Kerry Tribe, a well known video artist. The works were not necessarily interesting to me because of their content, but more so because of the types of machinery she uses to project her works from 16 mm film projectors to a reel to reel audio and/or video machine (one set up so the reels shape a Möbius strip and the other so the reels are traveling flat alongside the walls of the room). I thought that the presentation was more fascinating than the content, but maybe that's the point? Who knows with all of these contemporary artists.

Afterwards we walked to the house of Sigmund Freud (well the final house of Sigmund Freud where he lived and worked in the last year of his life). His daughter, Anna, lived there after his death until her death, and then the house was turned into a museum. Now you may ask, what does this have to do with contemporary art, well I'll tell you. Parts of the house have been left intact, like his study is still set up just as it was when he was still alive (couch and all), and Anna's room is also still set up with her loom, desk, etc., but contemporary artists are commissioned to make works of art to be inserted into these spaces (alongside a third room which has been converted into a gallery space, and a few other spaces in the house). At first I went to the study, and noticed a small table that had penis-shapes on it, and I thought "how appropriate." I was later told it was a contemporary sculpture, go figure. In Anna's room were some fascinating photographs of pornography with flowers inset into it. I won't show pictures here as there may be children present, but boy oh boy.

Then we took the train to Oxford! Yes! That Oxford, but I failed to make it all the way to the University as no one in the group wanted to go all the way over there. Instead we went to Modern Art Oxford where we saw an exhibition by Korean artist Haegue Yang called "The Teacher of Dance." Her work deals a ton with domesticity and housework, and also skin and separation from the outside world. Abstract and vague concepts, I know, but I found her work to be quite interesting and maybe a bit relaxing. Here are a couple of examples from the show:

Afterwards we had dinner at a restaurant called "Cafe Loco" where I had my first of three English high teas (That I have scheduled). It was delicious, especially the scones.

xoxo