tamaranth | A day of Culture, yeah

Hayward, boating!
Originally uploaded by tamaranth

Met

ladymoonray at the Hayward and did Culture:
Psycho Buildings at the Hayward. (Good review here, Times.)
I was intrigued by the moire effect on 'Stone lip, pepper tits, clove love, fog frog', which did indeed smell of pepper and cloves: impressed with use of smell to augment sight.

Do Hu Suh's 'Fallen Star 1/5' is a scale model of a traditional Korean house crashing into an American townhouse, a la Wizard of Oz: I liked the disgruntled-looking cat on the second storey of the latter.

Atelier Bow-Wow's 'Life Tunnel' was a freaky aluminium tunnel that demanded to be crashed around in, so we did. Several times.

Los Carpinteros' 'Show Room' was exploded, and lacked any personal touch: maybe 'showroom' was what it had been.

Rachel Whiteread's 'Place (Village)' was a spooky collection of dolls' houses in a dark room. The lights were on but nobody lived there any more.

Upstairs was the fabulous 'To The Memory of H P Lovecraft' (Mike Nelson), a pair of rooms (entered via a savaged wooden hatch built onto and around the structure of the actual gallery) where something fierce had been living -- clawmarked walls, piles of scat, general chaos. I do not want to meet Mr Nelson's cat. I suspect it has more limbs than most.

The 'Observatory (Air-port-city)' (Tomas Saraceno) is the bubbly thing on the outside (I have a photo of this being erected). Top layer was closed due to Weather: bottom layer was appallingly hot and bright.

Ran away and queued for ages next to Do Ho Suh's 'Staircase - V' (lurid red nylon model of staircase: much less impressive than 'Falling Star') so we could go and play in Gelitin's 'Normally, Proceeding and Unrestricted With Without Title' -- see photo. Yep, a boating lake on the balcony of the Hayward, 40 ft above street level. I was slightly worried about rowing off the edge but the construction of the boats and the balcony doesn't allow that. We repelled boarders, yelled "Avast!" just like Orlando Bloom, and hardly got wet at all.

Skipped 'Venetian, Atmosphere' (Tobias Putrih) which housed the film programme, as (a) there was a queue and (b) films of steel beams being dropped into concrete make me giggle.

Off to Feng Sushi for lunch (sea bass sashimi and x-ray salad: pomegranate seeds and chopsticks do not mix well). Then next door to Le Pain Quotidien for dessert: espresso chocolate tart and coffee. (K had raspberry tart, debased with dairy).

Poked heads into the Oxo Gallery for exhibition of new prints of Pink Floyd album covers etc. Uninspiring.

The plan was to head for the Design Museum and see the Tim Walker exhibition, but we failed to pass Zakudia -- where it was happy hour, all cocktails £5, and we could stare out at the increasingly vile weather, whitecaps on the Thames, onset of torrential rain. Raspberry royale fab, blackberry caipirinha even more so. By the time we'd finished, the sun had come out. And so home.

In other news, I bought a smelly light-up thing in the Hayward shop and am getting grief from Shiva for bringing it home. Bwa ha ha.