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I feel a bit like I am in an artistic vortex and cannot stop. I find myself a curious cat that cannot keep away from the cream. So much is happening and I have maybe only just scratched the surface. No Dallas Art Fair for me, no Basel Hong Kong for me, no Tate trip to South Africa for me... etc..... but I still manage to experience so much. London is an amazing city to stumble upon new, wonderful and exciting experiences.
LLDC and Legacy List invite me to the ArcelorMittal Orbit and we are totally dumbstruck. Despite resembling a red skeleton (minus the exposed shiny metal skin) propelled somewhere into the atmosphere and containing an uneasy feeling of work in progress, it manages to be totally awe inspiring and beautiful. Definitely worth a visit or two. Even if you are dismissing the strange and unsettling architecture, there is a sense that you are actually rattling around in someone else’s brain, Anish Kapoor’s actually. You can admire the incredible views of the Olympic park and beyond. It really is an amazing sight to behold and I think our Mayor, Boris Johnson has done a very good job to create a new city within the city, integrating it to make one huge metropolis.
Mother’s day was a fabulous surprise with Gabriele Beveridge’s Invites presentation involving a masseur giving us visitors relaxing massages in front of her wonderful art works.
Then it was goodbye Gabriele and hello Stuart Whipps who had me totally stumped with his intricate installation and how to crack the code. It rather got the better of me and my slow brain could not keep up with it.
Phyllida Barlow’s (or should I say Eddie Peake’s mum?) commission for Tate Britain in the Duveen Galleries was a show stopper. It was basically a load of old rubbish but on closer inspection you can see the intense structure and placement of materials.
Many people from far and wide had come to the opening including Stuart Shave and Jake Miller, who look like each other more than ever!
I went to the intriguing opening of Abraham Cruzvillegas where the question of ‘art or not art?’ was definitely present. Like Phyllida, visual form evolved from what looked like a load of old junk!
We had a lovely dinner to follow the opening, here’s Abraham with lovely Amalia Pica.
Then it was to Arles, France and what a treat was to be had! I went there with good intentions and absolutely no idea what I was going to see and left with an amazing feeling of fulfilment. It was thrilling to finally see Maja Hoffmann’s dream starting to turn into a reality. Here is our first night visiting the Foundation Vincent Van Gogh which had very kindly been donated to the city by Maja’s father, Luc Hoffmann. The architecture was sympathetic with the building and Raphael Hefti had created a wonderful permanent installation on the glass roof top.
I was mesmerised by Thomas Hirschhorn’s response to Van Gogh. Titled ‘Indoor Van Gogh Altar,’ it was rather less violent than Thomas’s usual fare and utterly inviting with these lovely sunflowers.
A few ears cut off,
a distorted dolls house
and a few boots. Everything attached and wired superficially with tinfoil tentacles to give it some sort of metaphysical life source.
My visit to Arles was centred around Frank Gehry and his incredible plans for a new building there. Here’s Maja and Frank relaxing after a hard few days of preparation for the big ‘breaking ground’ event.
Lunch was set in Les Alyscamps, Arles where Van Gogh had painted his many many paintings.
Frank’s amazing new museum. A fantastic accomplishment to get so far and to actually break ground on the site within the Parc des Ateliers.
To celebrate this Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno had curated a fantastic installation of many magical Gehry maquettes brought to life by the extravaganza of ‘Solaris Chronicles,’ a course of six-month interventions. Pure Theatre!
A hard act to follow but up the road we were again amazed by all the work that had been going on at Chateau La Coste. Sarvisalo has a long way to go to catch up with the dedicated hard work and management of putting together so many wonderful experiences. From a Liam Gillick installation placed lovingly in the middle of the nature.
To an incredible Tadao Ando pavilion with a huge Louise Bourgeois spider in the front.
Tracey Emin had a huge presence with this fabulous platform including a barrel with a cat in it!
Where there is good art, there is good wine and sure enough a new state of the art winery was built and housed by the architect Jean Nouvelle. However, within 24 hours I had left the beautiful countryside of Arles and was back in rainy London.
