Saatchi's treasures

The Saatchi Gallery is just one of many places in London I've been meaning to get around to but never quite managed in four years here - probably proving the point that when you're a tourist in a city you see more in a few days than the average complacent inhabitant does in years. 

So when the opportunity arose this week to join a small group to be guided round its current exhibition by curator and art historian Victoria Chaine Mendrzyk, I jumped at the chance. 

This was the Duke of York Square (where the gallery is situated) on an early spring day this week that couldn't quite make up its mind what season it was ...

Note the range in dress code, with some layered for the cold and a few brave souls baring their limbs and sitting at outdoor tables (with gas heaters clustered overhead).

Iraqi-born Saatchi turned to full-time art collecting after making his fortune early in advertising, and since then has been one of the single greatest influences on the world’s contemporary art scene. Everything in his gallery is his own personal collection; Saatchi quite simply buys what he likes, taking risks and championing young, unknown, as well as female artists, many of whom have had successful careers launched by being shown in his gallery. 

He opened his first gallery in St Johns Wood in 1985, at a time when there was virtually no support or public forum for modern artists in London (the Tate Modern only opened in 2000). In 1997 he brought his personal collection to an exhibition at the Royal Academy called Sensation, which then toured Berlin and New York, living up to its name with some of its controversial content.

Three years ago he relocated the gallery to its current huge premises in Chelsea (entrance above), which he had renovated into a series of interconnected, light, open spaces...

I was happy to see that these were filled with parties of school children and art students, and a policy of free admission. 

What a pleasure, too, to be told I was welcome to take as many photos as I liked, with or without flash. (In fact there was so much natural light that flash was never necessary).

I'm not the first person to find this gallery a friendlier and more conducive-to- display space than the Tate Modern. 

The significance of the current exhibition - Newspeak: British Art Now - is that it is the first time since the Sensation exhibition that Saatchi is showing the work of emerging artists from this island (defined as any artist working in Britain, regardless of nationality).

These were a few of the things I found most interesting...

Jonathan Wateridge: Sandinistas, 2007

Jonathan Wateridge's amazing, huge oil paintings with photographic quality (above and below) explore media and cinematic portrayal of world events and our consumption of these kinds of images.

Jonathan Wateridge: Jungle Scene with Plane Wreck, 2007

The most extraordinary of all the exhibits for me was Tessa Farmer's bug case. The photo below shows the scale of the glass case she constructed to contain her art works - a kind of modern, glass-and-steel cabinet de curiosités. But what are those tiny dangling specks inside it?

They are minute sculptures made of remnants of insect bodies and other bits of dried organic matter - sculpted into tiny figures on winged insects ...

Looked at from up-close, they are arranged in battle-formation, as what she calls "hell's angels of a microscopic apocalypse" ...

Tessa Farmer: Swarm, 2004

South African-born Carla Busuttil's crude, primary-coloured portraits (below) are based on media images, and arise from her interest in the way people in positions of power are popularly portrayed. 

You can spot Margaret Thatcher in the centre, Saddam Hussein (with hangman's noose), Jacob Zuma (bottom middle, styled after Jonathon Shapiro's infamous 'showerhead' cartoons of him), and Robert Mugabe, bottom left, in a portrait titled Don't Tell Marley (referencing Bob Marley's concert in Zimbabwe in the early days of independence, implying that Marley might turn in his grave if he knew how the other Bob's rule had panned out).

Nicholas Byrne: Hosier, 2010 (left), Cropper, 2010 (right)

Nicholas Byrne's intentions with these oil paintings (above and below) are inscrutable to me, but I loved the colours and forms he creates with them ...

Nicholas Byrne: Untitled (Collar), 2007 (left), Untitled (Boy), 2007 (right)


and Dan Perfect's wild and colourful oil creations ...

Dan Perfect: Village, 2007, Antelope Canyon, 2005, Aleph, 2007

Maurizio Anzeri makes these portraits by sewing and embroidering directly onto vintage photographs, creating multiple masked identities ...

Maurizio Anzeri: Rebecca (left) and Penny (right), 2009

... and Maaike Schoorel's oils, based on old family photographs, are so faint and ethereal that they force the viewer to actively interpret and reconstruct the images - a deliberate counter to the high speed, disjointed presentation of images in the media ...

Maaike Schoorel: Holiday, 2004

Last year Saatchi announced his intention to donate his gallery and around 200 art works to the British public.  He's not been without his critics - Tracy Emin, who owes her very successful career to his patronage, famously refused early on to sell her works to him because of the Saatchi brothers' advertising campaign that helped Thatcher get into power in 1979, citing Thatcher's 'crimes against humanity' (good on you, Trace), though she later reconciled with him, perhaps realising which side her bread was likely to be buttered.  Whatever you think of him, you'd have to admire this gift to the nation.

Forbidden City, Beijing

Today is census day for Britain (coming around every ten years since 1801, except for once during WWII), and also the day we put the clocks forward to daylight savings. I can't bring myself to say 'summer time', since despite the rash optimism of my previous post, it's a grey, nippy 8º C outside. 

A day, then, for another in my series of random travel posts, this one from a trip to China two years ago ...

While Shanghai (see here) gave glimpses into the personal, private details of life in China, Beijing, from the moment we landed at the spectacularly shiny, spanking-clean, post-Olympic City airport, was all drama, power, history. And nowhere were these elements more concentrated than in the Forbidden City.

For around 500 years the Forbidden City was the seat of power and intrigue, access to it denied on punishment of death to all but a select few people. It was home to China's Emperors, their families, servants, guards, senior civil servants, as well as, famously, the emperor’s concubines – well-educated young women chosen from the ‘best’ Manchu families to spend the rest of their lives cloistered in the Forbidden City – and the eunuchs who guarded them. 

(Both these last have their own stories, such as the last Chinese eunuch, who died in 1996 (see here) or the young concubine who rose in the ranks to become a powerful Empress Dowager - see here).

I'm the sort of person who is invariably drawn to details, but the aerial photo below gives a sense of the scale of the City and why exploring it properly would take weeks. Also called "the Great Within", it lies right in the heart of Beijing, which is arranged in a series of concentric circles around it, on a south-north axis from Tianenmen Square, in the foreground below... 

Photo credit for above shot: http://www.freebase.com/view/m/04g6kp_

... and is laid out in perfect symmetry – a series of intricate palaces linked by huge squares, courtyards and man-made lakes.

Their names speak of their designers' intentions - you pass through the  Halls or Gates of  Supreme Harmony, Heavenly Purity, or Earthly Tranquility, now guarded (it's a UNESCO world heritage site) by men and women in traditional dress...

Inside, every architectural feature, colour and decoration has symbolic significance ...

Beauty in the details of doors, ceilings and cornices, above and carved stone floors, below.

On this day in October, the great majority of the crowds thronging through the City seemed to be Chinese rather than foreign visitors ...

People crowding to touch a giant urn for good luck (above) and a little girl gets a better view riding on her father's shoulders (below)

All the buildings are made of wood. Huge bronze urns, like the one below left, were kept filled with water to deal with the fire hazard.

And below, the modern face of China's might was in evidence through the policemen who stood to attention or marched around all over the Forbidden City. I'm not sure what their purpose was there, other than simply a reminder of their presence, but in that they were certainly effective. (I was a little nervous taking this hurried photo. Is the guy in the centre of the front row giving me the beady eye?).

In Beijing restaurants, in the vast, sky-scrapered modern city, we were introduced to some of the best food we'd ever eaten in our lives, with vegetarian daughters deciding they'd landed in food heaven ...

Finally, it would be unforgivable to visit Beijing without a day-trip to the Great Wall of China ...

... though sadly, for me it was impossible to do justice to this sight in pictures. The photo below, of only a tiny section of the wall, may give some sense of how literally awesome it felt to be there.

Spring has sprung

At last,  some days of sunshine and temperatures creeping as daringly high as 10º C!  It seems to have been the longest winter ever, but here we are today with actual blue skies, for crying out loud (nou toe nou!) ... 

These pink blossoms have popped out on the scrawny tree outside my front door, and such was the bucolic scene at the farm down the road today ...











Yes, the trees are still bare and leafless, but lets focus on the daffodils and the spot of sunshine ...

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!

Yes, quite, Thomas Blackburn, but I'm having panicked thoughts: do I even have any summer clothes? Where are they, and will I still fit into them if I can find them, after seven months of red wines, vegetative DVD-watching and comfort eating? 

Calm down, it's not like we're out of the winter coats and boots yet. Venturing into the garden (above) for five minutes has been quite enough excitement for one day ...

A foodie's weekend in Edinburgh

Last Friday younger daughter and I skived off up north to Edinburgh for the weekend.  In the wee hours of Saturday morning it started snowing. By 9.00 a.m., as I made my way out of the city, care of a lovely, chatty taxi driver (is it in the Scottish DNA, or something in the water up there that makes them all such nice friendly people?), we were passing through fields of white ...

I was heading for Kirkliston, a little west of the city, to indulge a birthday present from last year, at the Edinburgh School of Food and Wine, in this amazing location - a coach house (bottom right in the pics above) with views of wooded countryside ...

in the grounds of Newliston House (below) designed by Robert Adam in the late 1700s ...

Inside, coffee and brownies warm from the oven were waiting, followed by a full day of alternate cooking, eating, drinking, demonstrations, more cooking, eating, drinking (did I mention that the Scots love to drink?), ending with a champagne tasting. Staggering out at 6.00 pm, the evening's dinner reservations began to seem like a very bad idea.

I'd had fun, learned loads of new things, and resolved that that would be the first and last time I attempt to make my own pasta (don't ask, it did not turn out well).

On the left, the lovely Tom, one of the school's staff, casts a politely doubtful eye over my cooking partner's and my presentation; on the right, rocket in the windowsill awaits dressing, as snow continues to fall outside.

By Sunday morning the snow had melted in the city and we had a day free to wander, drink coffee and explore, guided by our native Edinburgher, daughter the elder ...

View from Prince's Street across the gardens, left, and sisters wrapped up against the chill in front of Greyfriar's Bobby, right.

Clockwise from top left: David Livingstone in the Prince's Street Gardens (the High Kirk steeple through the trees behind), a young fiddler balancing precariously on one leg on top of a bollard on the Royal Mile,  the green and gold dome of the Bank of Scotland, the Elephant House coffee shop where J.K. Rowling famously wrote the first of her Harry Potter books.

The (Walter) Scott Monument, left, and spires of Edinburgh University's New College, right, home to the School of Divinity.


And look! 24 hours after being blanketed in snow, the sun was shining on spring flowers popping up in Prince's Street Gardens ... 

Monaco Blues

I have a bad case of the winter blues. (I keep hearing that spring is on the way, but other than longer days I can't see many signs of it around here). I have so completely had it with freezing temperatures, with heavy coats and boots. I'm dreaming about the sensation of warm air on bare skin, grass or sand underfoot. Planning our summer holidays this past weekend brought on a feverish fit of vicarious sun-seeking, browsing pics of summers past.

The gardens of St Martin in Monaco-Ville overlook the bay on the Côte d'Azure, where the Alpes-Maritimes meet the Mediterranean. We took a train ride along that coast a couple of summers ago, from Antibes past Cagnes-sur-Mer, Nice, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Cap Ferrat, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, to Monaco Bay, watching the boats bob along that impossibly blue sea.

The gardens are perched up high on a cliff top, adjoining St Nicholas cathedral where Grace and Rainier are buried, and are full of exotic plants, water features and sculptures.

I liked it up here. The tacky commercialism of Monte Carlo fades from this distance, and all looks serene and blue.

Pick a yacht, any one you like ...

The Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium are up here too, courtesy of Albert I (great great grandfather of the incumbent Albert), and very cool they were too, in every sense of the word ...

Roll on summer. I'm getting desperate.