Theatre - Last of the Haussman's at the National

J & I went to yesterday's matinee.  We are always worried when we go to the theatre because we are more often than not underwhelmed.  Not this time.  Funny lines, great actors and some social commentary thrown in- a very good first play for writer Stephen Beresford.  A dysfunctional family on the edge of disintegration.  Perhaps not quite Checkov but definitely more laughs.   J could see a touch of Noel Coward's 'Hay Fever'  we'd seen at Theatre on Lake in the Lake District last year.  

The ever wonderful Julie Walters plays the dying hippy mother - master of comic timing.  I've loved her in her TV and movie roles and I want to see more of her theatre work.  Just look at her - all that warmth, humianity and full of life energy she brings to all her roles.

Julie Walter in Last of the Hauffmans

Rory Kinnear plays her wastral gay son beautifully. - great contolled performance that makes you laugh and love him.  He deserves all the awards he gets and I will certainly see plays he is in from now just because I know I will see a great performance - yes I know I have been slow catching on.  I didn't know he was the son of a comic actor I loced in old movies but had never known his name or of the work he did outside films, and I didn't know he had died when he was 54 in a horse riding accident when Rory was 10. 

Rory Kinnear in Last of the Hauffmans

Rory's father Roy Kinnear

Article on Rory talking about his father: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3670797/Rory-Kinnear-becoming-an-actor-was-a-way-of-getting-to-know-my-father-better.html

Helen McCory plays the angry daughter with her own 15 year daughter problems (daughter played Isabella Laughland by who I am sure we'll see lot more of in the future), with great passion.  Because I was up in the circle, I didn't recognise her from all her TV roles.  Not suprising as she can make herself look very different - just look her up on google images.  Looked fabulous in her tight jeans and the beautiful black velvet baggy trousers with wonderful white baggy chiffon blouse.   She is married to  who had the lead role in the great US series Homeland which is one of the few that I will probably watch a second series of.   They live here in LA while he works there.

Helen Mcrory, on the left, looking half her age in Last of the Hauffmans with Isabella Laughland who plays her daugher.

Helen Mcrory with her usual powerful look seen in many a good TV drama.

Helen Mcrory with her husband Damien Lewis, both having that perfect LA look.

Matthew Marsh plays the devious?(I missed whether he gets the house) doctor with the usual flair I am used to seeing in his many TV roles yet here I saw more fun and funny side that he doesn't often get to play on TV.

Matthew Marsh in Last of the Haussmans

Taron Egerton plays his first professional stage role after graduating from RADA this summer.  It's a difficult role with little dialogue for ages, having to be slightly creepy, menacing and innocent all at the same time for the first half of the play, which he manages to carry off.

Taron Egerton in Last of the Haussmans

Ikea shopping - I was only suppose to buy the bloody bottle

I only went to Ikea for the £1.29 water bottles, then the White Mist took over. 

My friend John wanted a blue version of the pink flat Ikea water bottle that fits in nicely to a flat satchel without creating bulk.  But then my love of 'White'  just took over and 8 great value white picture frames and other white items later I had spent £100.   And, 10 packs of their lovely Espresso ground coffee to keep me jumping for another 3 months. 

 Prices are vague because I had to work out from receipt - nothing was over £10 - most under £6.



Picture 1

Picture 1

• The glass white top for £10 makes a great chopping board - I prefer glass for hygeine and the other little ones are too small.  
• The large white vase is really a garden candle holder and was either £2 or £5 - only things on receipt I wasn't sure of.
• The little white garaffe - £6 will be lovely for homemade lemonade.
• The tall white thermos is so elegant and great for extra coffee/hot water/or iced drinks.  £5
• The small round white thermos is one I got at a charity shop for £2 ages ago.
• and yes, the bloody water bottle for £1.29 (Ikea family member price)  £2 otherwise.

 Picture 2

Picture 2

• The big teacup with rose in the middle was £3.50 and bought for my parsley plant - just the right size to hide the black plastic pot.  
• The beige mug on the right was 1.70 - yes i already had a white one I use for cutlery on the left, but this one looked yummy coffee colour and make my coffee taste better - really!  I will wear it out with the 10 packs of coffee.

Spent about 3 hours in all, getting ideas of how to transform small spaces, having a very cheap breakfast and on the way out, an ice-cream.   For those on tight budgets going to Ikea to eat out,  early during the week especially when the Olympics are on and the school holidays mean most people have gone away or staying off the roads, is a great choice.

For Liz only - A Day Out in London during the Olympics

i can get free parking all day at southbank so we can explore there or spread out from there.

• the haywood gallery has 'Nothing' exhibition - not sure how good, might be silly .
  'invisible Art will bring together works from the past half century that explore ideas related to the invisible and the hidden, including work by some of the most important artists of our time as well as younger artists who have expanded on their legacy.'
  

• 

  Haywood - 'Nothing'

• wander round sth bank and it's shops and have lunch in restaurant
• 
  
  
  
  
  list of its latest restaurants:
  http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/visitor-info/shop-eat-drink
  
  
  
• walk along to tate modern - for lunch or exhbition or both - Damien Hirst -minus the live butterflies of course, Munch, and the the new Tanks space has opened for performance art.
  
  

  

  Damien Hirst

  
  



Munch

• lunch elsewhere along river
  eg Gabriells Wharf restaurants. 
  

or once parked there we can go anywhere
- take transport/taxi/walk into:

National Portrait Gallery - BP Portrait Award

• trafalgar square galleries:
•  - National Portrait Gallery  -'BP Portrait' and 'The Queen'
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
•  National Gallery - Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 -  Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger in a unique collaboration with The Royal Ballet - here we see the art related to scenery they created for the ballets plus more - including Wallingers room you get to peer in at volunteer nude women taking a bath - related to Titians 3 paintings on show of man peering at goddess bathing and being punished for it by being turned into a stag which is torn apart by dogs - go goddess/bit harsh?

Titian

• Royal Academy the Summer Exhibition (if i ring today/tomorrow i might be able to book 1/2 day parking) or the Impressionism exhbition with possibly Sketch restaurant - 5 in walk behind RA- it is crazy prices for a lot of their meals but the parlous menu has breakfasts from £9, cakes £5.50 and 7 pages of more affordable all day things  - attached menu.   the RA restaurant has now become more expensive but similar to Waddesdon prices.

'The world’s largest open submission contemporary art show, now in its 244th year, continues the tradition of showcasing work by both emerging and established artists in all media including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film.'

 or

From Paris: A Taster for Impressionism

RA new restaurant

 

 

 

 

Click for Royal Academy Restaurant Menus:  http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/files/all-day-menu-14-june-2012-1335.pdf

 

 

Click here for Sketch Menus:  http://www.sketch.uk.com/menus.php

Sketch - Parlours - not as amazing interiors as it's other restaurant areas but more affordable prices but if you love the other spaces below then you could always share courses.

Sketch - The Glade

Sketch - The Gallery designed by Turner Prize artist Martin Creed

Sketch - The Lecture Room

Sketch - The East Bar

3 OUT OF TOWN PLACES
- if we leave very early to get back in time for your evening  - all about 1 1/2 hours from london:   leave 7.30/8 and return by 5 or 6.   i need to check traffic cameras today and in morning to see if the roads are still staying empty - we would need to leave no later than 2.30/3pm to get back in case traffic goes crazy.


1. hastings - i have to go to pick up some art i bought some time this week  or next - the new Jerwood Gallery - Gary Hume.  
 see also my post on my recent day out in hastings - galleries and shopping - http://shirleyg-artstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/day-out-at-hastings-gary-hume-at.html

Gary Hume -

2. margate - turner Comtemporary gallery - Tracy Emin, plus the old town,  plus go to Whitstable on way there/back

Tracy Emin - Turner Comtemorary, Margate

Jenny Saville - Modern Art Oxford

3. Oxford - Modern Art Contemporary & - Jenny Saville exh - need to leave london at 7.30am so i could get one of the disable bays before they fill up after 9am.
'first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery'

see my post about the exhibition - though i would like to go again. 
http://shirleyg-artstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/jenny-saville-exhibition-modern-art.html

in conjunction, her 2 large drawings based on masters are next to the master paintings/drawings in the Oxford Ashmolian

Hastings Artist - Ian Francis

While at the artists forum I met artist Ian Francis who returned to his childhood area of Hastings recently.  He was looking after Victoria and Alistair's show for the afternoon (forum members help out on each others shows) and we had a good natter.  He trained in art but has been busy doing other things and just got back to it in last few years.  He didn't know Hastings has become a hub for artists while he's been away so it's been a wonderful surprise for him to discover the galleries and enjoy the support of the Arts Forum.  He had a couple of witty works in the forum's next door gallery exhibition - members' self portraits.  He showed me some very lovely prints he's creating of his abstract works to sell, which is exactly what I have been experimenting with so it was very interesting to see what is possible. 

As well as being on the forum's site:  hastingsartsforum.co.uk Francis

he also has his own site:  art.eucy.info.

Pictify

A sight recommended on the Saatchi site for displaying your favorite art - yours or others.  People then comment, like, or follow you.

http://pictify.com/user/ShirleyG

New pics for my Hastings Arts Forum page

While at the Arts Forum yesterday I realised my membership had run out so I paid up and today have been updating pics on my page of work.  There is a problem with them displaying until my membership is updated so I have put them here - they are rough collages of as a means of showing more than the allowed 20 images on the page.

my page on the Forum (when it's fixed)  http://www.hastingsartsforum.co.uk/artists/artists-page/gallery/ShirleyG/

Day out at Hastings: Gary Hume at Jerwood, Victoria Kiff and Alistair Kendry at Hastings Arts Forum & Robert's Curios

What a day I had, beautiful weather, art and people.  Only the night before I realised I had left it to a bad time.  We have a week of sunshine and high twenties temperatures, I could have gone Monday or Tuesday but, I left it till Wednesday, the day all the Olympic lanes came into operation.  I check the BBC traffic cameras at 8.30 in the morning and the traffic looked not too bad but I still expected it to be worse.  In fact, the roads were almost empty - the warning have been very effective - everyone's left town.  It was only on the way back when I was only 5 minutes from home, near the Olympics, that I spent 1/2 an hour trying to get round the home traffic dealing with less lanes on the A12 near the grounds.

1. Gary Hume At the new Jerwood in Hastings
  Gary Hume is another YBA that I didn't know about.  Simple shapes, glossy paint in colours you just want to eat.   The first one, 'four feet in the garden', is like many of them, pretty big and when you first look at it you see it as a black abstract shape till you get closer and you start to see feet and the subtle details of indented outlines of toe nanils etc, and, it's very shiny - bling bling, I can't resist.  These are works you definitely need to see in a gallery to get the full effect.   Often I see paintings, especially the old masters in dimly lit galleries for their protection and I just can't wait to get back to google to see up close clear images of them.  The images below just don't capture it for Hume's work - it just looks illustrative here.  There was a great 1/2 video of the artist talking about his work and this was really inspiring - especially the bit about the temptation to add more which ruins your first pure simple idea.  I can really learn from this, especially in some of the very closeup portraits of parts of faces I want to do and in some of my very closeup flower paintings experiments I want to develop.

Click here for more about Hume.

Gary Hume - Feet in the Garden (on the left)

I had afternoon tea in the Jerwood Cafe - looked nice but took a long time to come and had some stale edges on the little morsels.

Afternoon tea at the Jerwood

And the building itself sits right on the seafront amongst the old black fishermens' sheds.

2. Victoria Kiff & Alistair Kendry at Hastings Arts Forum Gallery - The Sea and It's Creature/Gilt
I met the lovely Victoria and she showed me around her new studio overlooking the sea.  It's a very exciting time for her with lots of exhibitions coming up over the coming year.  Definitely one to watch and perhaps invest in now before the prices skyrocket and they're just so lovely and full of feeling.   Alistair had taught me some wonderful freeing art techniques in a few classes I did with him - a great teacher as well as artist.   His sumptuous gold leaf, new super greens, textures and free strokes were wonderful too.  His huge gold leaf picture at the other end of the gallery as you enter deserves a place in a very large open space.   At £800 surely someone will snap it up - oh if only I had the money and the space.

 I have bought a few of theirs works (there goes the holiday but I couldn't stop myself) and will post them when I pick them up - can't wait.

Victoria Kiff- Portrait

Alistair Kendry - Red boat storm 2

click here for their artist statements and details of the forum's other exhibitions:
 hastingsartsforum-alstair-kendry-and-victoria-kiff

Keep an eye on Victoria's site for her upcoming exhibitions:  www.victoriakiff.net

Jenny Saville Exhibition - Modern Art Oxford

 It was just as well I had combined the Saville exhibition with my trip to 'Art In Action' Fair in Oxford, as the latter's car park was washed out with all the rain we've been having till now and they were bussing people from a farmer's field which I declined and went home - I wasn't getting my wheelchair which I need for exhibitions, into an electric golf buggy train thing to the bus then the bus to the show - life's too short.   The trip was still worth it for the Saville exhibition.

Loved this exhibition - HUGE paintings of flesh.  I'd seen her work online before but when you stand in front of these 10-20' pictures of big women, intersexuals, cosmetic surgery operations (she watched operations) and cows hanging  in abatoirs (she lived near one), you are just overtaken by them.  And then there are her beautiful recent drawings of her pregnant and holding her first child, based on Davinci cartoon.   I can now see why Saatchi took her on and I am beginning to see why the YBAs took off - there was a lot of talent. (see also my Hastings review of Gary Hume, another YBA (young british artists - late 80s graduates which includes Damien Hirst.)