North, South, East & West London Adventures

I have been enjoying a staycation and have had a few little adventures in London with friends this summer. Here is a summary of my many outings around London with maps and links so you could explore these places for yourself too.

3 mile walk
Setting off at Dalston Junction I explored the Dalston Eastern Curve Gardens for a pot of tea and then visited the outdoor market where I happened upon this rather shabby chic looking fabric shop, Dalston Mill Fabrics.
Next, a leisurely walk towards Stoke Newington where I discovered a gorgeous garden oasis just off the high street called Kynaston Gardens. A refreshment stop at an independent organic supermarket called Harvest N16 then down Church Street which is full of lovely artisan cafes, antiques shops, gift shops and the odd charity shop.
Finally, a chill out on a park bench at Clissold Park before a further amble towards Finsbury Park Tube station.

4 mile walk
I had a few friends staying at the weekend who wanted to see some different sides of London, so we started with a bit of culture at the Tate Modern. We perused the regular galleries and also saw the Alberto Giacometti and Fahrelnissa Zeid exhibitions too. My favourite was the Zeid show because of her beautiful use of colour and abstracted pattern.
We then walked along the Southbank towards London Bridge and took Fenchurch Street towards Whitechapel and the start of Brick Lane. On a Sunday Brick Lane is full of amazing food stalls and we ate huge portions of gorgeous vegetarian food from the Ethiopiques stall.

3.2 mile walk
Starting at Kensington High Street tube I walked towards Holland Park for the Design Museum. My friend Charlotte and I saw the California: Designing Freedom exhibition which has a 2 for 1 ticket deal on until the 28th August if you want to check it out for yourself. I really enjoyed it. It's full of colourful graphic design from the '60's onwards and chronicles the influence of new design and technologies from California (skateboards, apple macs, google) and how it has changed the world.
We had a komucha stop on a bench in Holland Park before walking through Hyde Park towards a cafe called Raw Press on Dover Street. The food was lovely but the service was a little abrupt and unfriendly which was a shame.

1 mile walk
The main reason for this visit was to taste the delights of breakfast at Farm Girl Cafe. Absolutely scrumptious food. Service is a little full on at the weekend because it is so popular but you can overlook that when your food arrives! I had the Buckwheat Pancakes and my friends enjoyed an Acai bowl. Both dishes were lovely!
To walk off the food we ambled down Portobello Road and watched the stall holders getting ready for the day ahead. A great vibe in this part of London on a Sunday morning.

2.2 mile walk
A solo adventure in Vauxhall and Pimlico to get to see some art exhibitions before they finished. First up is the free Newport Street Gallery owned by Damien Hirst. A lovely walk from Vauxhall through the gardens, past the City Farm and onto Newport Street. I saw the penultimate day of the Ashley Bickerton: Ornamental Hysteria exhibition which was a rather strange collection of paintings, assemblages, sculptures and mixed media work.
I walked to the Tate Britain along the river and across Vauxhall Bridge to see the Queer British Art exhibition. Which was pretty quiet on a Saturday morning. There is some great art to see here with a wide range of styles, genres and artists exhibited.

What have you been up to lately?

Design Museum - Women, Fashion, Power exhibition

Hand-beaded flapper dress - 1920's

Hand-beading detail - 1920's

Beach jacket - 1930's

If you fancy admiring some awesome clothes from a vast array of women from different time periods then you have until next weekend to enjoy the Design Museum exhibition Women, Fashion, Power.

You can't believe Victorian ladies could breath in the extremely tiny-waisted corest, drool over the fantastic prints of the 1960's and wonder how Skin from Skunk Anansie wore the crazy outfits in the '90's.

Vivienne Westwood - Vive La Cocotte A/W 1995

Costumes from Dynasty - 1980's

Costumes from Dynasty - 1980's

Skin stage costume - 1990's

Curved steel bone corset for 22" waist - 1895

1910 suffragette costume for Carey Mulligan for the 2015 Suffragette film 

Suffragette blouse - 1910

Design Museum inspires work for the Tate Modern

I have been very busy at work and doing crazy DIY on my house but luckily I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of arty fun too.

To keep creative I signed up to the Tate Modern six-week evening class based on the Richard Hamilton exhibition. The course covered techniques such as dry-point printing and collage which was right up my street!

The course started with a tour of the exhibition with the evening course tutor Ling, who explained the concepts and intention behind Hamilton's work. It turns out that Hamilton felt his work should be seen in groups or collections so they had a dialogue with one another and that as a viewer you could read them as a series that inter-connected. It was an interesting starting point for being creative!

Onto the art. We were given the theme of perspective (one of Hamilton's reoccuring themes) and were asked to define the meaning of the word in small groups. We had to do this with drawn images only. Our visual interpretation was then re-interpreted by a different group.... an interesting start to the class. Towards the end of the session Ling mentioned our homework (WHAT?) for the next session - which was to read two essays and to etch a dry-point plate based on the 'perspective of a space'.

The main room of the Hamilton exhibition at the Tate Modern

One of my favourite Dada-esque pieces from the Hamilton exhibtion at Tate Modern

The reading part of the homework was easy and interesting, but I was a bit stuck on what to etch onto my aluminium plate. That was until I visited the Design Museum's 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith exhibition...

The Paul Smith exhibition was full of fun bright, beautiful and inspiring things; take a look for yourself:

A recreation of the Paul Smith design studio at the 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith' exhibition at the Design Museum

The stairwell in the Design Museum

I used my photo of the stairwell to create the image for the drypoint print plate. Which I will post about seperately. The work I enjoyed the most was creating collage pieces with a restricted palette of colour and materials (red, white, yellow and green) based upon our printed image / print plate.

The final collages were then worked into with text and imagery from newspapers and magazines.

Caroline Joynson - Tate Triptych 2014