Lubaina Himid

A Bath Trip and Interesting Fungi

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As part of our joint New Year Resolution to get out and about more when the sun is shining, Jane and I went to Bath earlier this month.  We always enjoy visiting Bath, in part because the architecture reminds us of Edinburgh which we have also come to love, but also in its own right. 

One Of The Georgian Crescents Below Sion Hill, Bath

Jane always seems to find a treasured, discreet parking spot on Sion Hill.  The walk from there to the centre of town takes us past takes us past Georgian terraces and crescents and through big open grassy slopes with broad vistas.  It is an early treat on our visits, especially on a sunny day.  Then in the city centre, there are the impressive squares and circuses of intact Georgian houses, the river and its bridges, and the Roman Baths and Cathedral, all clad in wonderful local stone.

Bath Cathedral

A highlight of most of our Bath visits is the opportunity to pick up sourdough bread from Landrace bakery in Walcot Street.  It is simply our favourite bread.  This time we also visited The Fine Cheese Company a few doors along.  The service from the French chap behind the counter was a little snooty (perhaps because we enquired about English cheese) but he was very efficient in giving us a taster of the smooth and luscious Old Winchester cheese which we went away with.

The Royal Crescent, Bath

Jane had spotted that there was an exhibition of Gwen John’s work on at the The Holburne Museum and, for all the attractions of picking up top quality bread and cheese, seeing that was the prime purpose of our Bath trip.  I was only vaguely familiar with Gwen John following a recent conversation with friends in our village who had seen an exhibition of her work in Chichester.  They had recommended it and, anyway, I trust Jane on choosing worthwhile exhibitions like this one. 

The exhibition proved to be small but interesting.  Gwen John was clearly a formidable and influential woman.  It seems that her popularity has grown since her death but in life she mixed with, modelled for and inspired a wide range of other artists and produced attractive and innovative paintings.  I particularly liked the set of paintings on show called the ‘Convalescent Series’.  These are portraits with muted colours with an unusual surface texture apparently produced by the oil paint soaking into a chalky glue mix which caused bubbles and then small perforations in the finish.

‘Woman Seated’; Part Of ‘The Convalescent Series’ by Gwen John

When Jane and I met up outside the exhibition room afterwards we both said how much we had enjoyed John’s paintings but, amusingly, we both through that the best painting on show was one that was hung to illustrate her influence on other artists.  This was an interior with a single female figure by a Dane, Vilhelm Hammershøi.  We both thought it lovely.

‘Interior With Writing Table And A Young Woman’ by Vilhelm Hammershøi

I recall seeing a Hammershøi painting in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris last year when I began to appreciate his work for the first time.  I love his understated views of rooms, his grey palette and the ambiguity that stems from not being able to see the faces of the figures in his pictures – or the lack of a figure at all in the case of the painting I saw in Paris.

Alongside the Gwen John exhibition was a small exhibition of rather strange works by Gillian Lowndes.  The point of these seemed to be to mix as many different materials as possible so they looked like weird debris dug up from a brownfield industrial site somewhere.  The results weren’t uninteresting but I wasn’t moved by them.

Two Of The Works By Gillian Lowndes On Show At The Holburne Museum

The Holburne Museum also had a display by Lubaina Himid called Lost Threads.  This involved piles and streams of beautiful, brightly coloured Dutch textiles strewn across the floors of the museum rooms and woven between the pillars at the front of the building.  Jane and I had been to see a substantial exhibition of her work at Tate Modern a couple of years ago.  Like then, while we enjoyed the vibrant colours, we weren’t bowled over by works.

The Holburne Museum Clad With Textiles By Lubiana Himid

Having got a dose of culture, we went for lunch at Oak.  We had a very tasty lunch of vegetarian small plates.  These arrived at a relaxed and, for us, ideal pace – always a pleasant surprise in small plates-oriented restaurants where, too often, things seem to arrive with a timing to suit the chef not the customers.

My life back at home has been largely routine.  The weather hasn’t been very conducive to gardening and, while I have recommenced work in the field, there is still a lot to do to ready the vegetable patches for the new season and to plant some pot-bound trees I acquired a couple of years ago. 

The weather hasn’t stopped some good local walks.  Indeed, between the bouts of rain, we have had some lovely sunny days.

February Sun Over Local Fields

I’ve enjoyed the displays of snowdrops and the growing enthusiasm for the coming Spring being demonstrated by small birds singing their hearts out. 

I have also spotted some interesting fungi which seem to be thriving in the mild damp.  Just yesterday I saw a great pile of some sort of puff ball mushroom.

Crazy Mound Of Puff Balls Looking Like A Pile of Discarded New Potatoes

A little earlier this week I saw, for my first time, a myriad of small bright red fungi growing on felled tree trunks and branches and dotted through a few square yards of undergrowth.  These are Scarlet Elf Cap fungi.  A friend tells me that it is from these little red cups that the wood elves drink the dew to refresh themselves each morning; nice story and a lovely sight.

Scarlet Elf Cap Fungi

While I have taken myself off for leisurely walks or lounged around rather too much, Jane has been very busy organising an exhibition of local artists work as part of the village’s cultural festival (called Horsley Unwrapped).  Trying to tie down artists to various deadlines for facts about the work they want to display and any sale prices has been like ‘herding sheep’ at times, but the display boards have arrived and hanging of the work has started.  After the exhibition this coming weekend, Jane is suddenly going to have a lot of discretionary time available! 

On My Way To Get The Newspaper: Winter Sunrise

My only contribution to the festival so far has been supporting Jane with some of the collateral materials for her exhibition.  However, next week I am organising a Fun All-Comers Darts evening as part of the Festival.  Goodness knows how that will go – I haven’t played darts for a few decades!  I’ve bought some darts and am ready to go.  More on this next time perhaps….

Football Footnote: Forest Green Rovers, who I support through thick and thin, have just had their first league win since October 2023 following a run of 15 winless league games.  Incredibly there is a team worse than us in our Division (English Football League 2) and the win took us off the bottom.  This one win has turned hopelessness into absurd levels of hope that we can avoid a consecutive relegation this season.  But as someone on the FGR Fans Forum often says, ‘it’s the hope that kills you’.  Hope will either burgeon or turn to dust again this coming weekend as we play again the team we beat last October. My fingers are crossed….

New Year Resolution Trips

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Since retiring over 4 years ago, I have been pretty diligent at making and tracking progress against annual New Year resolutions.  Progress this year was patchy.  I met my alcohol-free days and alcohol unit reduction targets.  I also exceeded my target of an average of 15,000 steps a day, and my weight has just about stayed within the target range.  However, intentions to step up organisation of the vegetable garden and composting facilities have remained unfulfilled and I read a woefully small number of books this year. 

This time last year, Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I made a new, joint resolution to travel around the UK more.  Covid has, of course, restricted overseas trips and our sons are now living all around the UK – in Belfast, London and Edinburgh.  So perhaps inevitably, we have done more travelling around the UK than in the past, culminating in our Christmas on Skye, Scotland. 

Memories of Skye at Christmas

Our joint New Year resolution this year is to step up and renew our familiarity with the UK even more.  We have already started with a few trips this January and are lucky enough to have the prospect of many more this year.

I Never Tire Of London And Views Of The Thames; This One At Dusk

We had to travel up to London briefly to prepare the Barbican flat for sale.  There is another such trip later this week.  London is always a pleasure for me; there is so much going on to see and do (even in a pandemic).  This time, as well as seeing Middle Son and his partner for dinner at one of our long-time favourite restaurants (Moro), we went to exhibitions in the Barbican and in Tate Modern.  Plus, I managed a couple of hours in the Imperial War Museum.

Lubaina Himid Exhibition At Tate Modern

Lubaina Himid’s exhibition at Tate Modern was substantial and well done.  The vibrant colours and range of work were impressive but I can’t say I was entirely convinced or entranced by the pieces on show.  The pictures sometimes captured movement but didn’t generate dynamism for me and the sonic works, while interesting and atmospheric, weren’t arresting.  However, we both liked the bright colours and thought it was an exhibition worth seeing – especially as LSW is a member so tickets were available and felt free.

‘Old Boat/New Money’ (Accompanied By Sounds of Sea And Ships) By Lubaina Himid At Tate Modern

We both thought that the Isamu Noguchi exhibition at the Barbican was much more interesting.  The Guardian newspaper review of the exhibition rather poo-pooed the exhibition as being more like a luxury lighting show room.  Certainly there were a lot of lovely lighting exhibits on show but there was so much more.  I enjoyed a lot of the sculptures, some of the ceramics and, especially, the way the exhibition juxtaposed these with the light-based works. 

Views Of The Noguchi Exhibition At The Barbican

As usual, too, the Barbican had put together a clear explanation of the progression of Noguchi’s ideas as they developed through his life.  I thought it was an excellent exhibition.

More Views Of The Noguchi Exhibition At The Barbican

A friend in our village recently recommended a visit to the London Imperial War Museum.  So, when I found myself nearby, while LSW was shopping near Borough Market, I took myself off there to investigate the recently commissioned Holocaust Galleries.  These build up a picture of the Second World War Holocaust through hundreds of photos and the telling of many stories of Jews and other minority groups persecuted by the Nazis in run up to the war and then during it.

Imperial War Museum, London

This bottom up approach required time to absorb but had a layering and relentlessness to it that I found very powerful.  The portrayal of the seemingly inexorable drive to horror, from before the First World War to the Final Solution, was well done and did not shy away from the relative indifference of the world until it was too late.  The history is well known but, nonetheless, rather depressing and the exhibition’s intermingling of the stories of individuals with items indicating the sheer scale of the atrocities was as shocking as ever.  My brief tour of some of the other sections of the museum showing uniforms, planes, tanks and rockets felt a bit trivial afterwards and I’ll have to revisit those another day.

Prior to our London trip we made our first visit of the year to The Newt Garden in East Somerset.  As readers of this blog will know, we have been a few times before.  We love it because it is already a spectacular garden and it is continuing to evolve so there always seems to be something new to see (this time, a Japanese Garden and a ‘Beezantium’ – an exhibition about bees).  There is also a lovely restaurant.

View Of The Newt Hotel From The Gardens

We are now members and to justify the cost of membership we will have to go a few more times this year – what a hardship!

Hen Houses In The Newt Gardens

Then, after London, we had a day out at Compton Verney which is an exhibition space and park that we had not visited before.  LSW had seen a recommendation on one of the many social media connections she has.  Specifically this was for two exhibitions that were coming to a close.  One was of Grinling Gibbons, a master woodcarver (2021 was the 300th anniversary of his death) the other was of paintings by John Nash (younger brother of the more famous wartime painter, Paul Nash).

Sea Of Aconites In Front Of Compton Verney House

Both exhibitions were popular, a little crowded and worth seeing.  Grinling Gibbons’s background (initially around the docks in Holland) and his drive to network and commercialise as he built up his business in England was described clearly and interestingly and the pieces on show were terrifically detailed and impressive.  However, the full impact of his work would be best appreciated in the houses where his carvings still decorate walls today and I’d have liked to have found out more about how the work was done.

Example Of The Detailed Carvings Of Grinling Gibbons

The John Nash exhibition was also well put together and illustrated carefully how his career developed through the First World War, through his love of the countryside, then as a War artist in the Second World war and finally as a retiree travelling the UK and settling in his rural surroundings (as, among other things, a seed catalog and gardening book illustrator).  Unfortunately, apart from a few notable exceptions (see ‘Over The Top’ below), I didn’t like the paintings as much as I had hoped (or expected); insufficient liveliness of colour in too many of the works for my liking. 

‘Over The Top’ By John Nash

The house grounds, designed by Capability Brown, were lovely in the sun (though muddy underfoot) and the lunch in the restaurant was very reasonable.  It was another good day out very much in line with our New Year resolution to get out of the house and our immediate locale rather more.  Later this week: London and Edinburgh!

January Sunrise At Home. Trips Are Nice, But Home Is Too!