Everyone who went on the trip today wrote their name under a tutor and we were going to be taken on our own 'tour' of London. I signed up with Derek Rogers and had no idea where we were to go before we started.
I come from London and often spend a lot of my holiday and breaks from university in the city; I see a lot of theate, go to museums and shops and just generally sit in parks sunbathing with friends. It was nice to be back and to have the possibility of going places I wouldn't usually go in one whole day. It was also nice to experience the city with people who live elsewhere and have different reasons for visiting London - a few in our group hadn't been to London at all.
The reason for the trip was to collect research for current projects if needed but mainly to draw with the intention of entering the Transport for London Museums illustration competition; Secret London. The guidelines ask us to 'depict little known or unusual aspects of the Capital's history, culture, characters and communities - past or present. This is an exciting challenge for artists to celebrate a vibrant, multi-layered London in a way it has never been seen before.' This is something I'm quite interested in doing, as I love my home town and would enjoy creating something based on the places I like to go to, mainly around Soho.
During the day we had to re-adjust our plans as the weather meant it wouldn't be possible to draw outside. We decided to go into the Tate Modern to see an exhibition for artist Yayoi Kusama as her installations were apparently very interesting. I wasn't blown away by most of the work on show. It's a matter of my own taste, though, not artistic ability. I did like being able to see Kusama's work develop throughout her life, and to see the reoccurring images appear in new work. I found her work to be very experimental and very controversial, especially her work during the 60s and 70s where she encouraged nudity in a public performance where people would paint polka-dots on each other. The polka-dots remained a theme throughout and the second to last room contained a mock up of a living space lit with UV.
The room that made the exhibition though was the very last one. Mirrors covered the walls and ceiling, and. apart from a walkway, the floor was dropped and filled with water. Hanging down throughout the whole room were strings of lights that changed colour. Looking around, up and down the room felt never ending. You couldn't really see where the wall ended and where the mirror started reflecting. It felt like you were stood in the middle of floating lanterns or something similar and it was really magical.
The exhibition didn't really relate that much to my project but I really liked the last room and found it very inspirational just in terms of use of space and materials.
These are some photos I took on a disposable camera. I decided it would be nice to use a film camera and see what I got from it, as I live in London I wasn't interested in capturing things perfectly.
There was a protest outside st Pauls. I'm not too sure what they were protesting in the end, all signs seemed to be saying different things. But I quite liked this one. Unfortunately it seemed a lot of the protesters didn't really seem to follow what they had hanging over their camp.
This is the one photo I got inside the last room in the Kusama exhibition.
This is looking out from st Pauls. I like the quality in the film photographs.
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