coveredbutexhibited

Well Gravity http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/is all that you would want from a film - it really is most excellent and I recommend everybody to see it. From the extraordinary ‘special effects’ (so special that the film could be a documentary)! - to the range of emotions that Sarah Bullock conveys – all wrapped up in 90 minutes of suspended belief. Meanwhile Alpha Papa http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469021/?ref_=nv_sr_1 mines a particular version of embarrassed bitter humour that had me cringing with knowing laughter – in a good way. Elizabeth 1^st and Her people - the show at the National Portrait Gallery http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/elizabethi/exhibition.php is stunning. A spectacular show with some real gems from the dynamic portraits (the representation of cloth and costumes is all subsuming) to the actual artefacts – one cannot help being moved by the tiny knitted glove.

We held the group MA Book Art Camberwell dissertation tutorials on the 4^th floor of the Festival Hall. Teaching doesn’t get much better with the added spectacle of the view of north side of the Thames. Afterwards we visited Annely Juda who have a show by Suzanne Treister - http://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/artists/treister/treister.htm In The Name Of Art a dense and layered show which requires a nuanced knowledge of 20^th century art history, a working understanding of recent cultural cold war history and a newspaper to fully understand the work (it is supplied). Moving on to the beautiful Frith Street Gallery http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/shows/ which has a body of work by Anna Barriball. The pieces work with the space as they both have a sense of being in the process of becoming.  

While working on the MA Design and the Book at the Minories I popped into the show at Firstsite which has a retrospective of Agnes Denes http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/agnes-denes. There are some very delicate drawings which are underpinned by smart thinking around philosophical, environmental and sexual politics. The show at the Minories, Mr Eighty http://www.colchester.ac.uk/art/minories/event/mr-eighty has an intriguing range of works, my favourite is the piece created from 4 pins and sellotape – the catalogue description – ‘The edges of the works are reduced to such an extreme that they seem to question their own existence.’ Is a great starting point to thinking about the work.

An image of porta-cabins covered in the image of a building and a collection of velvet ropes behind the scenes at the National Portrait Gallery.