Spring is in the air, so what better way to celebrate than by a Surreal tea trolley dance courtesy of our friends Sally and Tanya. Sally and Tanya have developed this magnificent obsession into a lively art. Tea trolley dancing has its own dance steps and songs.

[Dali Tea Trolley Dancing]

[Magritte Costume at the Tea Trolly Dance]

[Surreal Lips Cookies]

[Tea Trolleys Ready for Dancing]

Continuing in a surrealist vein I saw these gentlemen on my way to the National portrait gallery. I never got the courage to ask them what they were up to. Maybe an English Version of Resevoir Dogs?

[Suits You Sir]

What to wear for the V&A’s opening preview to launch Italian Fashion? Advised by my facebook friends, I opted for embroidered lace Dolce Gabbana. This was a good choice because the show delighted in the textile craft skills that have always been a major part of Italian Fashion.

[Italian Fashion V&A Preview Party]

[Christopher Brown and Helen David at the V&A Italian Fashion Preview Party]

[Entrance to the V&A Italian Fashion Preview]

[Guest in Pucci at the V&A Italian Fashion Preview Party]

The Contemporary Circle at the R.A. is a lively group who put on a lot of great art events. The first we got to this spring was a wonderful talk by the incredible Christo. He and his wife, the late Jean Claude, are responsible for the famous wrapped buildings you see like the Bundestag and the Pont Neuf. Their work is huge in scale and remarkably ambitious. Christo says that it has purely aesthetic aims and does not making social or political comments.

 

[Christo Enthuses at the Royal Academy]

[Christo and his audience at the R.A]

The Contemporary Circle also organised an evening at Richard Mosse’s “The Enclave” in a garage in Brewer Street. Richard is a brave photographer whose work falls somewhere between a documentary photography and fine art. His images of the Congo landscape and people, often young soldiers, are strange because all the green in them is replaced with pink as the ultraviolet film he uses gets processed. His film installation on several screens all placed at different angles, with a surrounding sound scape, was a strange experience a bit like swimming under water, through a scary land.

[Richard Mosse – The Enclave]

[Richard Mosse]

A big show in London was the Martin Creed retrospective, which just closed, at the Hayward Gallery. Creed used all the outside spaces, for film and installation, as well as the inside with walls of broccoli prints and A4 paper coloured in with felt tip pens: a car whose doors flew open, closing and opening gallery doors and banging piano lids. His room of balloons where half the air in the room was contained in balloons, was fun to visit and an experience in static that became quite physically painful toward the end. The films of human body processes were not for the faint hearted, i.e. me, and i fled quickly.

[Martin Creed – Erection film]

[Martin Creed – Multi-coloured Brick Wall]

 [Helen David in the Balloon Room at Martin Creed Exhibition]

I whizzed over to New York for a few days. They had just got over a historically vile winter, the worst in 40 years, and so were all out in Central Park as soon as the weather mellowed.

I saw some nice shows in Chelsea including Matthias Bitzer’s. And the Whitney Biennial was on. A mixed bag, there was no over all theme i could detect. maybe because it had three curators if any one thing prevailed it was an “outsider art” aesthetic.

[Central Park in the Spring]

[Matthias Bitzer Show]

[Whitney Biennial]

[Whitney Biennial – Colourful Signs]

[Whitney Biennial – Frame]

[Whitney Biennial – Installation Cushion]

[Whitney Biennial – Installation]

[Whitney Biennial – Knitted Outfit]

[Whitney Biennial – Monkey Speaker]

[Whitney Biennial – Old Suitcase]

[Whitney Biennial – Sewn Canvas]

[Whitney Biennial – Tent Installation]

[Whitney Biennial – Totem and Video]

[Whitney Biennial -Paint and Video]

[Whitney Biennial – Knitted Picture

Back in the U.K. Spring has begun in earnest and Norfolk is looking as lovely as can be, an English Idyll with lambs, blossoms, bluebells and wild flowers.

[Spring Lambs]

[Norfolk Spring Flowers]