Serpentine Selfie

This morning after saying goodbye to my lovely B&B hosts at Captain Bligh's House i traveled north of the river back to the Lincoln House Hotel. It felt abit like going to a different city. After stowing my bags i set out across Hyde Park to find the Serpentine Gallery. And here i am outside the gallery with this lovely rock pile by Fischli and Weiss. Doesn't my head look rock shaped?

There were two stunning shows at the Serpentine which have reopened after an expansion project. The first was Marisa Merz and was not photographable, but was full of good things including a wax violin. The second show was Adrian Villar Rojas and was a total knockout.

This is the extension on the new Serpentine which will open shortly as a restaurant.

As you enter the gallery you are confronted by this elephant made of clay supporting a replica of the cornice moulding from the outside of the gallery. The artist also created the brick floor. The uneven bricks made a sort of musical clinking as you walked across them.

As you went around the corner the walls became this modulated and cracked clay surface which led to a small door.

Inside the door was a room filled with glass and steel shelves loaded with clay pieces. Fruit, figures, tires, abstract pieces. It was a stunning inventory that recalled the ceramic display at the V&A in its scope and abundance. Some of the figure pieces were especially interesting.

After that spectacle, and with some time to kill i wandered over to Kensington Palace. The garden was lovely and the cafe was not bad. Unfortunately the palace itself was the worst kind of tourist trap, clearly designed to shuffle the masses through. Yuck. The display of Diana's dresses was particularly creepy.

The most arresting thing in the palace was the beautiful shadow cast by this lamp in a stairwell.

       After a cleansing walk back through the park (really it was like having tourist cooties) I headed over to the Wallace collection to meet a friend and see this beautiful show of male nude studies from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and a leisurely afternoon tea.