Sorry for the delay.
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
