Gestures and actions

It's dusk and the sky is a lovely purple colour. I drop my gaze to just above the roof tops and the purple has drained away and I can see the remaining vestige of daylight. It is a yellowy turquoise and is rapidly turning to dark blue. The sky is clear so we might see some stars tonight. It is 4.46pm and in 10 days it will be the shortest day of the year, otherwise known as the Midwinter Solstice.

A number of traditions associated with the solstice have been incorporated into that other great festival which follows hard on its heels. The yule log and yule wreaths made from holly and ivy makes for a traditional Christmas and the pagan festival is now nothing more than a background note to the main event. Just the other day I was confusing the pagan with the Christian when I was browsing around Mysteries, a new-age shop in Covent Garden, looking for a Christmas present for a friend who's an atheist. Are you confused because I think I am.

That same evening I was part of a group celebrating the end of the autumn academic term. There was a festive air in the Palm Tree pub while we enjoyed eating, drinking and chatting about our holiday plans. Then we were busy pulling on our coats, hats and scarves and grabbing our bags to walk the short distance to the Chisenhale Dance Space. There was a sense of anticipation after we'd hiked up three flights of stairs and queued quietly and respectfully before piling into the performance space. There may have been an audience of about 100 sitting on the raised benches and I was tapping my feet impatiently wondering when the 'evening of new work and exploration' would begin as there wasn't much to look at.

Evidently the Chisenhale Dance Space has been a 'seedbed for research and development in movement arts and independent dance' for over 25 years. We were to watch the work of four artists and then answer questions put to us by them about the performances. Helga Stromberger's Body and Light was fascinating. She was exploring the potential of projecting video images onto dancers and she tried various combinations of movement and images including sound. This performance was most interesting and some of it was quite hypnotic. Like Helga's Body and Light, Rachel Oxley's Dilate employed a number of women dancers who remained isolated from each other but in this case the focus was on gesture, speech and movement and sometimes it was very amusing, but sometimes frustrating when, for example, we had to watch the dancers sitting on chairs which were lying on the floor and they couldn't get up. The performance by SOFt was a complete contrast. SOFt are a collective of five dancers who work regularly together exploring improvisation and their work was wonderfully physical and some of the arm gestures reminded me of Martha Graham's work from the 1920s.

It was the second performer of the evening who bored me silly at the time but paradoxically has given me more pause for thought in the few days since than any of the other dancers. His performance wasn't a dance in the accepted sense at all. It was a series of actions of locking and unlocking his imaginary bike lock and we, the audience, were supposed to be able to follow everything he was doing. He said he less interested in demonstrating gestures than in actions. I didn't realise there was much difference between the two but consulting the dictionary I read that gestures are 'postures or movements expressive of sentiment or passion' whereas actions are movements without the emotional component.

While the imaginary bike lock was being opened and shut I mentally returned to my visit to Mysteries earlier in the day. I'd entered the shop hoping to enjoy a few minutes of mindless browsing at the gifts and books I would never buy before I went in search of food. I often do this and occasionally buy a card or candle on my way out. The shop girls were busy chatting to each other very animatedly and weren't much interested in the customers. I began my journey around the shop by peering at the crystal jewellery on display in the glass case which never has any prices on show. Then I turned round and saw some china mugs. I was amused by the decoration and the message painted inside them. I wondered about buying one of them then decided against it. Then my attention was diverted by a massage glove hanging on a hook above my head and I reached up to take it down and inspect it more closely. There were more of the mugs hanging next to the glove and before I could get to the glove I managed to smash one of the mugs on the floor. This shocked me but didn't bother the shop girls who simply cleared the broken bits away and continued their conversation. On reflection I don't know whether I was using actions or gestures during this episode but the accident was certainly mindless.

The First Emperor

It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting on the sofa writing this blog and watching 'Cranford' on television at the same time so I reckon that means I'm multi-tasking. I'm also surrounded by a sea of paper that's drifted into the house via the letterbox: some of it needs shredding, some needs filing and yet more of it simply needs recycling, but there is one piece of paper I won't be throwing out immediately. It is the brochure describing the exhibition that's pulling in the crowds at the British Museum and that's 'The First Emperor, China's Terracotta Army'.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be part of a focus group at the British Museum. This group spent most of the day, guided by facilitators, visiting exhibitions at the museum and discussing them afterwards. The results of these discussions will provide the museum staff with our opinions on what we thought worked well and what didn't. One of the threads that found its way into our conversations during the day was 'Isn't it great that we're getting to see the Terracotta Army as well!' The tickets for this exhibition are selling like hot cakes and rumour has it that visitors are queuing outside the museum every day from around 5.30 in the morning to snap up the 500 tickets that are released every day for sale. All our group had to do was turn up at the main gate at 9.15 am and be shown where to go and this made us feel very priviledged.

We congregated in the Great Court which is covered by a vast glass, domed roof which was installed in 2000 and is wonderfully light and shows off the sculptures to great effect but is very drafty to stand around in for too long. (Note for the future: wear more layers.) Once we had all arrived we were herded by our facilitators, gripping our notebooks and pencils in our hands, towards the entrance to the 'Terracotta Army' exhibition and encouraged to push aside the patiently waiting queue (remember they'd been waiting for hours) to arrive at the beginning of our journey 20 minutes before the paying public could go in.

Here we enjoyed, or endured, a nice piece of theatre. We had to navigate our way through a dark, narrow corridor with the only clue as to where we were going being the view of rows of books above us in the reading room to guide our way. Then we emerged into a lit area and had to ascend a flight of steps to reach the start of the exhibition which reminded me of climbing a pyramid. This served to create the atmosphere that we were entering a sacred space which was enhanced by the silence that surrounded us. There was the expected explanatory detail about the First Emperor who was born Ying Zheng in 259 BC and lived until he was 49 until 210 BC. He became the King of Qin when he was very young at the age of 13. The state of Qin was one of seven main states competing for power. Under his leadership Qin conquered the other states using highly developed weapons technology and military strategy. After his first campaign the King of Qin declared himself Qin Shihuangdi: First August Divine Emperor of the Qin. What a modest man he was!

As we proceeded around the exhibits we learned that the Emperor introduced reforms and enforced strict laws in order to govern his empire. Many of us were genuinely impressed that he established a standard weights and measures, a single currency and a universal script across the empire: all of this happened thousands of years ago. We were also surprised to discover that one of their measures for liquid is almost identical to our litre and that 'Qin' is pronounced 'Chin' which may be the origin for the name China. So we moved on past weapons, arrowheads and decorative glass vases but I was becoming impatient to see the warriors themselves. I skipped some of the exhibits so I could rush through the doorway that marked the division from life to the afterlife and finally gazed on the terracotta warriors.

There were about 14 in total - not the 7000 that the Emperor was buried with - but that didn't detract from the spectacle. The sculptures are life sized and originally would have been painted in bright colours. Every figure has individual features and their own personal clothing. One of them is a fat strongman which amused a number of us because he looked like a sumo wrestler. Another one had slouching shoulders and a concave chest. There was also an acrobat whose limbs were partially missing and there were life size horses pulling a wooden wagon. Archaeologists have also excavated civil officials and musicians, bronze chariots and birds in an area 56 km square. The tomb was more than 30 years in the making and once the Emperor had been buried the whole complex was concealed and seen by no-one until a farmer digging nearby found a terracotta head back in 1974. This exhibition deserves a second visit so next time I'll just have to go and join the queue and wait patiently like everyone else.

Please watch your step

Thames Water Authority have been spending the last few months digging up our roads and pavements and replacing the decrepit Victorian water mains that provide our drinking water with nice, new, blue plastic pipes. We know they are blue because we can see them stacked up ready for use everywhere we go. As the engineers finish one section of road they move onto another, or they might start again on the same section of road they just completed. This work is likely to continue for months to come so every time we leave the house we have to watch where we step since the surface we're walking on might have changed overnight!

Last weekend we had a guest to stay who was keen to visit Tate Modern and we were happy to oblige. This entailed skirting the red metal fencing surrounding the various excavations in the roads and walking on heavy plastic covers laid over holes in the pavements to get to the bus stop for the 388 bus. I always find this bus route an interesting ride because it takes you through Hackney to Bethnal Green and then through the City of London and on to St Paul's Cathedral which is where we got off.

Tate Modern is on the opposite side of the Thames to St Paul's and the quickest and most scenic route to cross is to go via the Millennium footbridge. This is an elegant, steel suspension bridge described as a 'blade of light' and is the first bridge to be built across the Thames since Tower Bridge in 1894. However it's got the nickname of the 'Wobbly Bridge' because of an unexpected swaying as a result of the numbers of people walking across it in the first two days it was opened. Consequently the bridge had to be closed to the public in June 2000 and modified to eliminate the wobble and reopened in February 2002. So now it is safe to cross and you can enjoy the view while you walk. It only takes a couple of minutes to make the crossing and you'll notice to the left hand side of the Tate the Globe Theatre which is a reconstruction of the theatre where Shakespeare's plays were performed during his lifetime. Since the theatre is open to the elements, having no roof, it has a short season which ends in the autumn.

As we approached the Tate we could clearly see Louise Bourgeois' sculpture of an enormous spider. I have seen this piece on display inside the gallery where it seemed dwarfed by the size of the Turbine Hall but outside it seemed to have more impact because it is clearly larger than anything else near it and made the humans walking around it look a lot like ants milling around.

So finally we had reached our goal which was the installation in the Turbine Hall that has been causing so many comments in the last few weeks. It has become known as the 'crack in the floor' and several visitors managed to fall into it in the first few days it was open to the public, so presumably they weren't looking where they were going! It is the work of a Colombian artist called Doris Salcedo and is called 'Shibboleth'. A shibboleth, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is 'a word used as a test for detecting people from another district or country by their pronunciation, a word or sound very difficult for foreigners to pronounce correctly.' It is, therefore, a way of separating one people from another. I've been quoting from the text written by Martin Herbert published in the accompanying leaflet and he continues: 'For Salcedo, the crack reveals a 'colonial and imperial history [that] has been disregarded, marginalised or simply obliterated...'

I was obviously too shallow to understand any of this while I traced the length of the crack from one end of the hall to the other. I didn't get at all the 'untold dark side of the history of racism' while I examined the crack. I happily crossed from one side of the crack to the other in my short journey. I admired the skill it must have taken to create it and wondered how she managed to embed the chain-link fence into the crack that is clearly visible, but I didn't feel I was being encouraged to 'confront discomforting truths about our world and about ourselves'. However I did think it was time for lunch once our visit was over.

Off to Avebury

So yesterday, Sunday, saw us travelling to Avebury. We were spending the weekend with friends of ours in Swindon and this trip was our Sunday outing. Avebury is in Wiltshire, nearer to Marlborough than Swindon but still only a short drive away through rolling countryside. I enjoyed being a passenger in the back of the car having the leisure to look at the leaves on the trees, which are turning to red and gold, in the clear, autumn light while our friend drove and navigated diversions on the road.

Avebury is a World Heritage Site and is one of Europe's largest stone circles and some of the stones are impressively colossal. Unlike Stonehenge which is two miles west of Amesbury (also in Wiltshire) and is on a small, contained site, Avebury extends in a large straggling sort of way across a number of fields. It accommodates a pretty little village and some roads run round some of the larger stones. Apparently the stone circles were constructed 4000 years ago and originally comprised more than 180 stones. Where the stones are missing pointed stone markers have been put in their place so you can see the shape the circles would have made.

I have to confess that I'm not that interested in speculating what the original purpose of the Avebury stones might have been since the circles were created so long ago, but I do find the maps of earth energies you can buy in the village shop that some people have taken the trouble to dowse, and map, entertaining. What I do enjoy about the place is the atmosphere of tranquility and peace inspite of the numbers of people, and grazing sheep, you meet along the way traversing the various paths. At one point I was passed by a large party, who may have been one family, complete with young and older people and at least one dog. They were so close to me that as they walked I could clearly hear their conversation. Within a few minutes I saw them in the distance walking in a line from right to left, up and down a small hill and they suddenly looked more like pilgrims en route to a destination known only to them and their conversation was completely private. We finished our stroll to the site with a visit to a stand of old, knarled beech trees that have roots that extend so far from the base of the trunks that they have formed an interlacing pattern. It was like standing under a tent and every so often some people would leave the protection of the trees and others would join them.

It seemed natural at this point to visit the Red Lion pub and I quote "it is the only Inn the world positioned within an ancient stone circle and is said to be one of the top ten most haunted locations in the world". They apparently have a resident ghost called Florrie who "is said to have had her throat slit by her husband after he caught her with another man and threw her down the well with a boulder thrown on top of her". The said well is in the bar and is safely covered with a glass lid. Frankly it looked to be a tight fit for any but the slimmest adulteress to end her days in but no-one seemed to care one way or the other since eating lunch was the chief activity going on.

Open House

Last weekend was Open House across London. This meant that us commoners could gain access to buildings which are generally closed to the general public. This is a once-a-year treat that is, I understand, available across Europe at this time of year and snooping around otherwise closed buildings can be a lot of fun.

In past years we have queued for an hour and a half to visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which gave us a chance to chat at length to friends we hadn't seen in a while. We've also trekked around pumping stations in East London and a hospital in Bromley-by-Bow. They were all very interesting. Last Sunday we chose to visit Charterhouse Chapel. It was a pleasant afternoon and we walked there from Union Chapel in Compton Terrace, Islington. We basically traveled south via Upper Street gawping at all the restaurants as we walked. We reached the Angel and joined St John Street where it meets Pentonville Road and then continued south.

We carried on, passing yet more restaurants until they petered out to be replaced with 1960s office blocks. They were all empty because it was the weekend so this part of the street was pretty much deserted and it felt as though we were trespassing on a film set. We passed City University and eventually reached Clerkenwell Road. I thought we were nearly there by then but no, St John Street carried on further yet. We finally turned left when we reached Charterhouse Street which led us to Charterhouse Square.

I can't really recall much about the square except that the road surface is cobbled which makes it picturesque to look at and awkward to walk on and there is a garden in the middle of it. I admit I wasn't really paying attention because I was distracted by seeing real live people forming a queue outside a gate. We joined them and it turned out that the chapel wasn't going to be open for another 10 minutes so we had to be patient and wait until we could go in. While we waited we were given information sheets to read and we learned that the chapel was built by Sir Walter de Manny in 1349 to commemorate the thousands of Black Death victims who were buried in the square which had been purchased by him as an emergency burial ground. 'Oh, so that's what the nice garden is for', and, 'are there people buried under my feet as I stand here?' are a couple of the thoughts that passed through my mind.

In 1371 Sir Walter founded a Carthusian priory on the site and the chapel became the priory church. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1545 the chapel was demolished to make way for a new, private house for Sir Edward North. So when you pass through the gate into a garden you can see marked out on the grass the layout of the original church and the tomb of the founder, who is still buried there, and a memorial to the brothers and lay brothers who were executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy.

Then you are directed towards a door which takes you to the Chapel Cloister. My experience of cloisters, which I admit is limited, is that they form four sides of a square around a small garden and are open to the elements. This may well have been the case when this monastery was founded but this cloister is more like a wide corridor leading to the present chapel and was glazed in 1847. It is full of commemorative plaques to various former pupils of Charterhouse School which is now located in Surrey. The building above the cloister was destroyed by a fire bomb during the Blitz in 1941 and later restored. Within the doorway that leads to the chapel is what remains of the wooden door which resisted the fire in 1941 and saved the chapel from ruin.

As I entered the chapel my first impression was, 'isn't it small and dark?' There are box pews and it looks as though the officers of the church, the choir (if there is one), the organist and congregation must all sit on top of each other. When my eyes had had a chance to get used to the view I decided it was rather cosy and could seat a good many people in comfort. My attention was drawn to a memorial on the wall to one of Thomas Sutton's executors. It has a portrait of the said gentlemen that is in relief. He looks rather splendid in his robes and ruff and has the same name as, and looks similar to, a good friend of ours which is remarkable because this man died in 1614!

The main function of the Charterhouse, is now as a home to 40 male pensioners, known as Brothers, some of whom were there to answer our questions, and so it seems the site has gone full circle with Brothers still in residence six centuries after the original priory was founded.

Wandering in Wiltshire

Thursday lunchtime found us sitting on a bench eating pasties and gazing at the Wiltshire countryside. The view included, about a mile away, the A30, beyond which is a clearly marked DANGER area, where Her Majesty's armed forces practice blowing stuff up and is close to, if not part of, Salisbury Plain. The weather was glorious and I discovered later on that I looked as red as a beetroot having caught the sun and not used any suntan lotion.

Our goal was to get to Roche Court to see a sculpture exhibition of Anthony Caro's work that was due to end in a few days time. We'd got this far on our journey by first taking the bus from Salisbury. Then, not knowing the area, we stayed too long on the bus and found ourselves stranded in what might as well have been No Man's Land. We had in our possession an Ordnance Survey map, no 131 if you're interested, bought the day before specifically to avoid getting lost but initially it was no use since we couldn't find where we were on the map so couldn't get our bearings. The result was a rather longer walk than we had hoped. We were finally put on the right path by two nice ladies who were doing some gardening and after that we were able to enjoy the day. It turns out that had we had our own helicopter we could have landed it on the front garden at Roche Court if we'd given them advance warning of our arrival!

Straw soaked in disinfectant by the main gate reminded us that Foot and Mouth is back in the country and that Roche Court is a working farm as well as venue for art exhibitions. The main house appeared to be a Georgian building but visitors are not allowed in the house. Visitors are allowed to roam around the large expanse of garden where a lot of sculptures are displayed, in the walled kitchen garden where there are more sculptures and in the small contemporary gallery, which joins the house, and was showing some abstract works by Sheila Girling. I had expected to only see the Caro's on display in the garden but a number of other artists had work on show which made for a more interesting visit. Barbara Hepworth was included as was Richard Long. There were a few odd pieces that looked like fairy tale characters from the Brothers Grimm but they were offset by pieces that I found more interesting and were abstract pieces inspired by the human figure.

I realised I was getting a bit tired when, in the walled kitchen garden, I paid more attention to the structures that the runner beans were growing up than the artwork next to them. However the things that really impressed me here were a couple of very large amphorae lying on the ground. I don't know if these were really, really old but I know this kind of thing was used in ancient Rome to contain oil or wine and I liked to imagine that they might be ancient.

We completed our visit by sitting on one of the exhibits and having a chat. It was a piece called 'Harbour' by Oliver Barratt - I hope he didn't mind but we just needed to have a sit down before embarking on our return journey to Salisbury.

On the Arundel Gallery Trail

Bank holiday Monday found us on a smart new train out of Victoria Station and heading south towards Arundel in Sussex. We were going to sample the Arundel Gallery Trail which is held during the Arundel Festival towards the end of August every year. The idea was to go and see our friend, David who I'd shared a stall with at our local Midsummer Festival. He was showing his woodcut prints and drawings along with three other artists in a vacant shop in Tarrant Street which was at the heart of the gallery trail and so was a good place to exhibit.

Arundel lies close to the South Downs and the countryside, as you approach by train, is distinctly different from anything we usually see in the Lea Valley and is well worth a visit. The town has its very own castle which is rare and was established at the time of the Norman Conquest. The castle has been extensively restored over time and frankly looks too good to be true. Being sited on a hill it dominates the view of the town from the train station and provides a good landmark to follow as you walk into town. The castle has been home to the Dukes of Norfolk, the premiere Catholic family in the country, since way back in the 1500s. The town also boasts its own cathedral which is, I understand, what normally defines a city but since it's a Roman Catholic cathedral that may not apply in this case.

We approached the town from Queen Street which meant we had to cross the River Arun and as we did so we were offered the chance to buy an entry into the duck race and the plastic yellow ducks were all lined up and ready to go! I quite fancied the idea of joining in but by the time we went back some time later it was all over - shame. Never mind, since what we really wanted to do was go visit art. The trail is an art 'open house' event and you can pick up a brochure with a map in it and trot up and down streets entering participating houses and shops on a whim and without an invitation. It's great fun and provides a fantastic opportunity to snoop round posh Georgian houses. A couple of the houses had jazz music playing in the background which competed with the live Rock and Roll playing in the town square - I must say I preferred the jazz. There was the usual mix of interesting work and tat and some work had the desirable little red dots placed underneath indicating they had been sold.

We particularly liked some sculptures in what estate agents would call a well appointed garden in Maltravers Street. There were some sculptures of individual fish on metal spikes pushed into the lawn which, when displayed in an untidy row, resembled a shoal of fish which we rather liked and I can't remember the name of the artist and there was also a display of large copper pots made by Mike Savage. It would have been nice to buy one of these pots but we don't have room in our very small garden. Another artist's work which made a favourable impression on us was by Andy Waite. While we didn't like everything on show in his house we very much liked some of his large landscapes, especially those which had been inspired by the local landscape and you can have a look at some of them at his website. Arundel is a small town and it seems that everyone knows everyone else so I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Andy and tell him that many years ago I spent some time lolling around in his kitchen when David had lived there. Oh, how time flies!