Tacita Dean: Film

In January I also saw Tacita Dean's Film the new Unilever installation in Tate Modern's Turbine hall.

I'm not usually one for video art, I often find it hit or miss but this one was a a hit for me. 

Photo: Joseph Keating, www.atsukojoe.wordpress.com

It inhabits the space with an almost monolitic quality, making me think of Arthur C Clarke's novel and Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The screens size in the space gives the projection epic proportions, something I found I only wanted to increase by sitting down and dropping my eye level. Like a cinema screen yet disproportionate, it fit well with the idea of portraying physical film stock. Showing not only the imagery but also the bits we don't see when film goes through a projector.

The scale also reflected iconic aspects to the building it inhabits namely the central chimney, made more obvious by the almost constant imagery that undercut the whole piece. This repeating imagery may have been part of the Tate Modern's chimney, it was difficult to be sure. While the architecture was unmistakably from the Tate Modern, it's exact location was difficult to ascertain. This worked better as while tied in wonderfully with the space, it didn't specify so loudly that it drowned out the other imagery.

This other imagery included added sections of moving image, often cut into the still background, as well as a combination of shapes and colour changes that subtly altered the nature of the film. One might expect it to say something about the nature of film, through the history and conventions of cinema (our most recognisable way into the format of film). In fact it was far more visceral than that, looking at the nature and physicality of film.

It's power came in the almost hypnotic influence it had on the space, something I've not felt since Olafur Elliasson's The Weather Project. From the ground it was immersive, but even from the bridge on the second level it was powerful, not only in it's presence but in the ability to people watch those so caught up in it. People that become (to return to a sci-fi reference) but black silhouettes against a bright backlight reminding me of the visiting aliens from Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

Looking back at the viewers on the bridge

 

Many Things

It has been a long time since my last update. I hadn't realised how long it had been.

Well since that last update many things have happened and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may have heard something about them all.

Soon I will be jetting off to the exotic east coast. Southwold on the Suffolk coast of England to be exact. I visited once before but as I was a tiny tiny child I really don't remember it at all. All the evidence that remains is of me, a push chair and some brightly coloured beach huts in a faded photo.

I am really looking forward to it, it will be a massive change of scene with lots of photographic/artistic potential. I've been doing a little research to make the most of my week as I imagine getting hold of a computer and an internet connection might be a tricky undertaking. Places including the lighthouse, amber museum (the only one in the world!), Electric Picture Palace (with working electric organ that rises out of the floor) and Maize Maze all sound suitably intriguing and fun in a very stereotypical Britain in the 50's/60's way. I will be going with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend but I imagine I will be spending quite a lot of time on my lonesome. This I also don't mind as long as we get together in the evenings. I'm almost considering it some kind of residency, unofficial it might be and I can see myself continuing this current thing with sea related paintings.

I have been doing lots of sea related paintings recently. Since finishing the elephant (more on that later) I have completed the Cowes paintings for the ReOrsa project space installation. I have also completed another smaller work of Cowes. Additionally to that I also painted a work on Cardiff (surprisingly no sea in that one). There's also been a flurry of drawings and as always am continuing the photography. In fact things have been moving so fast that I'm no longer up to date with the website. I think it must be something to do with the themes of my work but the Summer continues to be my busiest time of year unlike, as I am given to understand, most artists.


I have recently been accepted to show my work at the Crocus Gallery in Nottingham and Atelier-East showing in the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Wisbech.

The Crocus Gallery is a volunteer run community space. It runs using an empty shop and does a wonderful job brightening and livening up the local area. The exhibition “Summer” is running from 17^th July until the 7^th August. I'm also getting to show for the first time “London Landmarks” a four canvas work that was one of my most ambitious works in some time.

Atelier-East organises and supports local artists, putting on shows in local spaces including the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. This is also the location of the 5^th Annual Summer show (open, in my favour , to non local artists) in which my work “Greetings” is being shown from the 7^th August until the 18^th September.

As to the elephant, well he did really well. After the miniatures he is also in a book about the London Elephant parade along with all his chums and makes an appearance on t-shirts. Hopefully these links will continue to work for some time.

Book:http://shop.elephantparade.com/

T-shirts: http://elephantparadelondon.spreadshirt.co.uk/greetings-from-the-jungle-I11936293

I went to the herding when they were mostly all together in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. I say mostly because a select few were deemed too valuable or delicate to be left outside and needed to remain inside. They resided at Westfield, London for the duration. Unfortunately this meant I didn't quite get to meet all of them but I was more than happy with the ones I did.

In the end the elephant went for £12500 at auction, helping to raise money for the Elephant Family. The whole event was a huge success with the target of 2 million to be raised from the parade being absolutely smashed, in the end the parade made 4 million quid for Asian elephant conservation.

Whooooo!

In search of Elephants

So the day is finally here, The elephants are all over London! There are elephants at Heathrow, Brixton and St Pancreas but in the most part they are in Central London.

They are in plazas and on streets, some are hiding inside buildings and undercover, some are happily herding in the parks and green spaces. Taking in the colours of Covent Garden Market, going shopping in Selfridge's, having a picnic in Green Park, people watching in Trafalgar Square, going to a movie in Leicester square, relaxing by the water. I could go on and on.

The map for all the events can be found on the Elephant Parade London website, or indeed here:

http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/images/elephant_parade_london_routemap.pdf

My elephant 'Greetings from the Jungle' has been sponsored by European Land and is no. 103 on the map. He can be found at 31 Harbet Road, Paddington a mere stones throw from Paddington Railway Station or Edgware tube. As far as I can tell he is in fact down near the canal in the middle of the new developments rather than right on Harbet Road.

I made an event on Facebook, please feel free to invite all your friends and contacts. Additionally I will post all the photos I get of my elephant (or if you like of you and my elephant) there on the event and on my website (either in the main body of it or here). Either post the photos yourself on the event page or send them to me at gemma@gemmacumming.com.

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=113760665329125&index=1

If you want to facebook friend me, feel free to ask however I usually don't befriend just anyone, sorry but I'd rather know you in person somehow. However the event is being run through my facebook fan page and I'm always happy to have new fans. You'd get all of the important art related information there anyway rather than what I ate for breakfast this morning.

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/pages/Gemma-Cumming/14653030250

Finally my elephant was one of 80 chosen to be made into a miniature. As yet no sign of it online to buy but there are pop up shops in four London locations including: Selfridge's, 36 Carnaby Street, 80 Oxford Street and Greenwich Central Market. However if it is anything like the Amsterdam miniatures they will come in a selection of sizes from about 10cm to 20cm. I will post online images of people with my miniature as well. :)

The parade goes on until the 23^rd June when all the elephants are rounded up from their sightseeing and have a week long party in the grounds of the Chelsea Royal Hospital. It is open to the public and I plan on popping down that week so I can see all the elephants together. I will be visiting my elephant before then however and there is a meet artist day on the 22^nd May, so it is all go go go. On the 3^rd is the auction (you can already express your interest in bidding for an elephant on the Elephant Parade Website!) and on the 4^th we say goodbye to them all.

And while it is far from over I would like to quickly express my thanks to the Elephant Family for the opportunity, to European Land for sponsoring my elephant (especially while there are plenty of unsponsored elephants out there in the wilds of London, seriously poke your bosses and organisations and grab one, you'll get green points if nothing else), to those crazy guys at Ecomovers who delivered my elephant in all that snow and took him away for a trip around the country before getting back to London (made him into a real postcard there) and everyone else who supported me, read my blog and answered all my questions.
(All photos are of my elephant as he progressed)

It's Not Finished.................... It's Finished

Well the elephant is finished. It was taken away at 8am on Monday and I then proceeded to get back into pyjama bottoms and spent the rest of the day watching Battlestar Galactica and tidying my room. Heavenly. I also made a long list (on the back of an envelope, the best place for important notes) with as many of the things I needed or wanted to do as I could remember.

I meant to write this entry on Sunday night, then Monday but I was so knackered that only on Tuesday I got round to starting it and I quickly abandoned it for more Sci-Fi and some of the more visually orientated tasks on my list. Surprisingly I find the writing as tortured as it seemed when I wrote the first draft is not as awful as I feared, although it still contains much rambling and non relevant material. But isn't that what a blog is meant to be at least in part? I should know better than to watch the same programme all day, my mind will become inevitably obsessed with it and I won't be able to think of anything else except plot twists and character profiles until I have exhausted my supply of it. So while now I am pretty clear of it, back when I was trying to write this the first time I was having to battle my brain to think about art.

Hmm, lets get back to the point of this entry.

So the last two weeks of painting the elephant have been hectic. I have been getting up at 6am in an attempt to start work at 7:30. In practice this has ended up more often with me hitting snooze twice and then not starting till 8, but it's not bad considering. Actually the sheer length of my day from 8am to 6pm reminded me a lot of the last few months of University which is not something I have had to do (and enjoyed) since then. While it was immensely stressful (one can have too many dreams about the elephant getting lost, destroyed or coming alive) it was also extremely focusing and turned into quite an obsessive exercise. However the stress was intensified by the unknown time factors including; sections of detail that took far longer than you would have expected or sections that you expected to take ages was done in next to no time. It made working out how long certain elements would take impossible to guess. It also made when (or even whether) it was going to be finished change on a daily basis. In the end he was finished at about 10pm on Sunday which considering what could have happened wasn't that bad at all.

Ahh no matter! It is done now and I'm pretty damn pleased with him. There are still aspects to him I think I could have done better, but isn't that always the case? Plus he came together as a coherent whole which, considering that I was working from drawings and an image in my head on a 3D and (to say the least) unusual surface rather than a photograph on a flat canvas as I am used to, was wonderful. Oddly I wasn't even that wrenched to see him go. The studio has space in it again and I was glad to have it all finished. I'm looking forward to seeing him in situ more than I am sad to see him go. In fact strangely enough it was my mother that was most upset to see him go. Go figure. Apparently she's going to miss seeing him stare from out of the conservatory at her in the mornings.

Below is an image of the both of us together, taken when the men came to pick him up. I'm not sure what possessed us to have him facing backwards but it was at 8am so maybe me and my Dad were still half asleep. There are a ton of other photos on the Flickr set I made for him here is the link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noblueskies/sets/72157623599724090/

PS: You get geek points if you recognise and laugh at the title.

(I think I used too many brackets in this post)

Arggg!

Arggg!

Less writing, more painting

So there really is little to say about the elephant this time. I have been working hard on it, in fact more so than before as I have been trying to stretch as much painting time into the day as possible. Only about a week ago I had my finish date fixed (8^th March) and there is still a fair bit to do, I really hope I won't have to pull a few all nighters to try to get it done. When it was arranged it seemed like a fair amount of time and enough to get what looks to be very little done, unfortunately it is also some of the trickiest and most detailed work. I am also slightly concerned that I don't like some bits of the most recent developments, granted they are unfinished but still when they are done I doubt I will have any time to paint over or redo them. Scary stuff all and all and 'The Fear' has definitely set in, I am even considering get up at 6:00am so I can start working at 7:30 tomorrow. Yes I am MAD, this is evidence of the sheer level of fear I am under.

Anyway here are the most recent photos.

'Phant-tastic

So I promised another posting on the elephant in my previous blog post. But alas I find myself with very little to say. It has been going well and the increase in daylight hours has been quite a shock to me truth be told, so now I am happily working till 4:30pm when before I could barely get myself going again after lunch (knowing I would have only an hour at best to work in).

So the elephant, well it is resplendent in various shades of green. I have got to about the belly level although there are still aspects that I need to get back to. It is a process of layering, taking the furthest away points in a scene and painting them first then working forward remembering to put down enough base colours so that I don't stall myself. And while this was prevalent during the last posting I have worked into quite a good system and am surprising myself with how much I get done.

The trunk is only partially finished as of yet and while I ache to get on with these little flowers I have other more pressing concerns that need dealing with first. His eyes I also want to get on with but they also are low priority as yet and I still have the bizarre notion of doing one blue and the other orange that I need to work out before I deal with them.

My mother has become quite enamoured with the whole thing, actually wanting to use a camera to produce images to send to relatives (She distrusts technology and is not the usual choice for wielding a camera). She has even named the elephant 'Edward' and since I completed the mouth area has decided he looks like he is happy about what I am doing to him. It is a little far for me but I don't mind it and I will admit happily that he is starting to look less dopey the more paint is on him and indeed he seems to have developed a smile, goodness knows from where. He will not however be named 'Edward'.

I also realise that I started this post saying I didn't have much to say. I think we will all be glad that I didn't, for goodness knows how long it would have been had I had.

Finally I will say that I have decided that although I like the idea of the grand reveal, there is not really any sensible reason to not show off a little how far he has come along. The pictures range from the last entry to today. By no means exhaustive but a far approximation. I hope to have at least one more entry of him finished but maybe I'll find something else before then. Oh and I should mention that there is a new mini site with elephant info about the parade up now: http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/index.html

London Large

For a large part of last year I have been working on one big painting. It was finished just before the New Year but I haven't had the chance to post anything or take any photos . The Elephant (mainly the excitement about the elephant) and having to mostly evacuate my studio for Christmas/New Year has delayed me. However while I knew I had taken the original photographs that became this work a while ago I was horrified to find out (after sorting out a few files on my computer and taking a quick look at the folder containing the preliminary photographs and photoshops) that it was possible I'd started the actual painting in May of last year, let alone that the photos had been taken 9 months ago.

Now, I have in that time produced a few other works. You can lose a month and a half to the Bracknell piece and at least up to June/July time I was working on the Windsor paintings and digital works. Plus a week here and there on other unrelated projects, trips and dull, ordinary, day to day stuff. Still 4-6 months on one painting feels like a lot.

It shouldn't really, granted I probably could have worked more, those long summer days etc. But I have to remind myself that this 'single' work is in fact 4 paintings. The fact they come together to form one large canvas, the like not being seen since 2006 and those halcyon University days, is unimportant. They are not the large canvas of those days. Those works were a single image scaled up and frequently I have proven to myself that the complex and intricate image I'd have done at University on a 120 x 180 cm canvas takes almost the same amount of time as the same image done on a quarter of that size.

As you can see some of these paintings are quite complex (Houses of Parliament!!!!) so it's no wonder they took a while. It's just a shame that to the uneducated eye it might look like I've done very little this year compared to previous years. But hey, It was an experiment to see if I could continue to push my work and make large scale paintings again, especially ones that remain user friendly to my current situation. I also wanted to see If I could make a multiview image that I was truly proud of, and while there are elements of the finished work I am not quite happy with, I believe I have managed to do this. In fact I believe that I have managed to do it twice in 2009 with 'Welcome to Bracknell' as well. Not too bad then really.

Oh and if the final image below looks a bit funky its only because I had to put the 4 paintings together in Photoshop rather than take a photo of them assembled.

Elephantine Update

AHHH! I wrote a blog entry and then conveniently forgot to post it. Oops. Well here it is, revised and updated a little unfortunately you will have to cope with older pictures of what's been going on.

4 days after receiving my elephant I was still drawing in my design! Usually a painting of a similar size to it would take an hour or so to do this so I really wasn't expecting it to take so long. I will admit that without the use of an OHP and having to do it entirely freehand must have put a crimp in my style. The fact is that there is no original photograph, only a roughly sketched design and what's in my head. The design while it took influence from many sources could not be projected well, even if there was room to do so.

Additionally the design requires that each side of the elephant be the same image with a few alterations so I have found myself spending more time walking around the 'phant than drawing on it. Happily I finished the drawing just a few days later and started painting him on day 5 of receipt.


It has been quite a challenge so far, I had not anticipated a few things and they came as a little bit of a shock. For one the drying time of acrylics is very different to oils, far faster and while I had used acrylics before and realised this would be the case I had forgotten quite how fast they can dry. This has taken some getting used to and has forced me to rethink a few minor details. But it has also come as a godsend for (and I know no idea why I didn't think of this) in many areas the paint has required a second or even a third coat to produce a properly opaque and even covering which has slowed me down a tad. But the days get longer and the work is now progressing at a good pace. I actually think I am still on target.


I hope to write another entry sometime next week or early the week after with a photo of an almost (or even finished) trunk, bearing in mind that the entire upper section of the 'phant will have to be done before I even get that far. But for now you will have to cope with the drawn version.

A parade under my hat

OK so the big reveal.. Well if you've scrolled ahead to look at the pictures you may already have a good idea what is going on.

As I have mentioned to many of you insisting on finding out what I have been so secretive about, I did tell many of you about this when I was applying in September time. I know it was a useless hint but I was so excited about it I was half convinced I'd jinx myself.

Well today I had a fibreglass elephant delivered.

As some of you might remember I was rambling at one time about applying to paint an elephant and as some you may have guessed by now I have indeed been chosen to do just that.
I found out in November time that my design had been approved and all that was needed to be done was sort out a few logistics. I also decided then to not say anything until I actually had the elephant under my roof.

Now I have to say although the delivery date had been fixed for about a week, after all this snowfall we'd had I imagined that it wouldn't make it. While I'm very glad it did, the delivery men had a whale of a time getting it through my back garden into the conservatory and even more fun trying to get their van full of elephants back out of my road. Apparently Wimbledon just isn't all that bad snow wise, after this weekend they might change their minds. Unfortunately their early and slightly unexpected arrival caught me alone in the house (unusual with this weather) and sitting on my own foot (literally! Stairs at speed with a dead foot... dangerous) as a result my plan to document the hauling of the beast through the snow was left upstairs with my camera.

So for those of you who still have no idea what I'm talking about.
In the summer of 2010 there will be a parade of elephants throughout London. Approximately 200 fibreglass elephants painted by artists and celebrities will be scattered around the city. Not only creating a talking point and a colourful fun scene but also highlighting the plight of the Asian elephant.

I was privileged in 2007 to see something similar happen in Bath with pigs.

More information can be found here: http://www.elephantparade.com/london/ and indeed here http://www.elephantfamily.org/

And that is all I had under my hat.
Expect occasional photos on twitter and maybe even the occasional blog entry chronicling it's journey from white to glorious technicolour.

Kew Gardens - 29th May 2009

My trip to Kew was unexpected to say the least. It had been somewhere I had recently been thinking about going and with summer well advanced I knew it likely to be busy and colourful. However it is also somewhere that takes quite some time to get to and I had always thought that there was little else around that attracted me to the area. Really it was just on my mental list of places to investigate online before committing to going.

What ended up happening was outside interference from my mother after my mild rant on the Friday morning about costs of visiting Paris for the day and all the other places I was thinking about going to. Next thing I know I am putting my camera battery on charge for a brief period and getting ready to go out. I was hardly prepared, the camera didn't gain enough charge for a photographic adventure with no worries about running out of power halfway through the day and I had no idea what to expect.

Soon enough we are on a train to Richmond and then onto Kew. Now as I have said before I don't usually like going on these kind of outings with other people, If you are going to come with me it has to work one of two ways. Either the trip is primarily one of fun (for whatever reason) and my photography is secondary to that or you realise that I am going to be doing all sorts of strange and unexplained things, I'm probably not going to be all that accepting of stopping to rest a lot (I just don't, I'm completely impatient and always looking for that next shot) and I will more than likely keep going until I, the sun or my camera is completely exhausted.

So bearing this in mind I was a little cautious about going to Kew with a parental unit, especially one with arthritic knees and one that doesn't share my passion for what I do. She quite likes plants however so that was a bonus, as was the credit card (I hadn't realised how expensive Kew was to get into) It was also handy that Kew has some well defined and obvious places to get good photos and it's not so big so as to get around in a few hours. So I set myself to work on principle one and take it as a fun day out. Although my mother is quite used to some of the more unusual antics required in getting particular shots as my father is also a photographer and he is probably worse than I. My dad will often stop immediately if he sees a potential photo, although his can be almost anything from macro shots of insects to wide angle landscape shots. I tend to see mine a little before I get to them and a shoot fast unlike my father who may see a shot but have to wait until everything is right. As I have explained before I generally don't have that luxury or in fact want. The last time I was waiting for a shot I was trying to get sunlight on the Houses of Parliament (sunlight being probably the only thing I will wait for) and standing there on Westminster bridge with a camera just means you end up experiencing the cameras of every tourist that walks past. I think in the 10 minutes I was there I was asked 5 times. And yes of course I took them all, even one that stole a moment of sunshine that should have been mine!

But back to Kew, it was a very nice day but I realised quickly that my camera just didn't have enough charge to last me all day so I had to be quite restrictive in what I took. No more photographs from inside the plant houses or close ups of waterfowl as they would never be paintings. A shame since I'm not just about postcard style shots and it did steal that sense of photographic abandon that I relish. The place overall had a pretty calm air about it. You wouldn't have thought you were anywhere near London certainly but it was much as I expected. Doesn't mean I didn't have a good time, it was excellent ,but the most exciting part?

Just chucking myself on a train and going, no planning, little or no expectations, reckless adventure!

Spitalfields Part 1 (24/05/09) - On that shot you get a second chance at

I headed away from Brick Lane back towards Liverpool Street Station and on the way managed to get another photograph of an ice cream van. This makes three I managed to get a decent shot of, the first becoming a painting in early 2009, the second a few weeks previously while in Portsmouth. From Liverpool Street I caught the bus back to London Bridge and took a little time to grab shots of both Southwark Cathedral and HMS Belfast/Tower bridge that I had seen multiple times that weekend already and not managed to before. It seemed like fate was driving me to get these photographs and I'm not one to ignore that.

After hopping on the Jubilee Line as far as Canary Wharf I wandered around trying to find the correct bus stop for the rail replacement bus to London City Airport (as I said travel was broken). By then my feet were really starting to hurt. While In Canary Wharf I got a few photos which was nice as the last time I was there the sun was rapidly going down. So very shiny all that steel and glass, there was also an interesting public sculpture that I could have sworn was a deep blue but all the photographs I took make it look like it was black.

The bus ride to London City Airport was quite enjoyable. Nothing really beats the underground for getting around London fast but the buses help connect the city together. Plus you get to see some interesting views if like me you prefer landscape to people watching. In particular I got quite a stunning view of The Dome from the Blackwall area.

I got off a stop early to see the Thames Barrier and was mightily impressed by the surrounding gardens. I had seen on the map that there were gardens on the north side of the barrier but really expected it to just be a large heathland or open park like space. In fact areas were very heavily manicured and others left to be more natural with many trees and a Cafe. A slightly surreal situation as I felt I was very far from any kind of residential area. In fact I was quite wrong, there is quite an impressive residential community in an area I would expect to be almost entirely industrial.

The Barrier itself was far more impressive than I expected from images I'd already seen. Surprisingly for such a mechanical monster it was quite relaxing, I imagine this was due to the beautiful day doing wonders for almost any object and my proximity to the river which as I have stated before seems to induce a profound sense of calm.

I then proceeded to walk to London City Airport and attempted to walk around the perimeter trying to find a good and unobstructed view. Walking to the terminal proved that there was no good unobstructed view from that side nor was there any sign of an official viewing platform. Not wanting to attract too much attention to myself and being quite aware of current security concerns I decided to go see if I could get a couple of quick shots from the bridge and call it a day. In fact what I found was that the bridge was inaccessible for pedestrians but there was a separate underpass with a great view of the runway and directly underneath the incoming flight path. I was scared half to death by a black private jet plane that stayed about 30mins then departed as quickly as it came.

I hung around for a while getting a few photos of the terminal and planes but realised I was really too far away for my little compact camera to get anything close up. I also had the definite feeling that I might be doing something potentially a little naughty and had had that feeling since I walked into the general vicinity of the airport. In the end I crossed over to the other side of the docks and spent more time watching, photographing and filming the planes as they came in. Of course from where I was I wasn't going to get any people in my shots so it was more a curiosity thing than any real expectation of artwork coming from it.

I will finish up this excessive post with a quick note on the confusing return journey. As I said before, transportation links in this area were a little broken due to weekend engineering works. On the way home I ended up taking the DLR one stop then a Rail Replacement Bus to another DLR station and almost remained on the bus going back the way I came. Frankly the guys running the bus must have stopped caring and while they were friendly enough they were more concerned in having a laugh while moving the herds of people around to mention we had got to our final destination. After working out where I had ended up I realised the bus had dropped us at a non functioning DLR but within walking distance of Canary Wharf. Happily walking to Canary Wharf gave me a second shot at that view I had seen earlier on the bus of the Dome.

Definitely a day of second chance photographs.

Spitalfields Part 1 (24/05/09) - On doing this alone

Finally I have got round to editing this. I was hoping for a concise entry but I quickly realised that 1. I have a lot to say even if I manage some semblance of being concise and 2. this was an oddity of a trip that actually requires an entry about each area I visited that day.
So I continue...

My trips to London have mostly been for two fold reasons, taking photographs and seeing my friends who made the move. As I see so little of my mates now compared to while at University I usually do little intentional photography for my art as all my time is spent having fun. On the Saturday evening we had as a group descended on the Spitalfields area to celebrate a birthday with boozing and 50's style bowling. While there I was told about Sundays in the same area, cool markets Brick Lane and the such. Since I already knew I would be having a rare Sunday to myself it sounded like an excellent plan.

A quick note: I am not entirely against combining the two reasons to come to London. It is just the way I inevitably work is not usually group friendly. I tend to walk a lot, I rarely stop moving and when I do it is for the purpose of some image I have half seen. Sometimes capturing said image might require me to go off the beaten track, do strange and potentially embarrassing things (like lie down on the pavement) wander where you might not expect to go and generally follow some impulse or other. There have been many occasions that the shot I want requires me to kneel down halfway across a road. And none of these behaviours suit a group activity.

I realised that the Spitalfields area would not take all day and although I could do as I usually would and just go to an adjoining area (Shoreditch, Hoxton etc) I actually had another idea in mind from a planned trip that had yet to happen. I had wanted to go to Heathrow to see if I could get photographs of tourists and planes in much the same spirit of Malcolm Moreley's cruise ships. As you can see from this and the previous post it has been on my mind. Prior research told me that Heathrow might be troublesome without some pre arranged clearance to prove I wasn't an evil terrorist type (my lack of two mobile phones might have stood in my favour however). I decided instead to take a DLR ride to the Thames Barrier and London City Airport. Places I had never ever been near before which in London is a rarity for me. Unfortunately it being a Sunday meant that transport and especially the DLR was quite erratic.

So I started out at Liverpool Street Station after having taken the bus from London Bridge. It is quite a nice journey in fact crossing the river over London Bridge where you can see HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge in one direction. A view I had seen the Friday night previously and have plans to revisit. You also get nice views of Southwark cathedral and for me some unusual overground views of the area around Monument, which I have done previously but it was quite some time ago.

Outside Liverpool Street I took a moment to try to find a nice angle to photograph the Station for a future project I have in mind. I then wandered towards the areas we had been the previous evening, having no particular goal in mind but to investigate. I ended up wandering through Petticoat Lane market which was a riot of colour and people. Slightly claustrophobic and although it was enjoyable it was also pretty hard to get photos in. The fact of it is that in any close quarters environment you will really struggle to get a well composed image that doesn't have someones head in the way. This is an example when many people are detrimental to my process. Luckily I did find an excellent vantage point halfway up a set of stairs into a council estate at the junction of three roads literally covered in market stalls.

I continued to roam along the market until I came out at one end to the main road. Checked the map as I still hadn't found the particular area we had been in the evening before and headed towards the indoor market. It was interesting but alas it was also indoors (no sky!) so after a couple of photos I moved on. Eventually I located the place we had been the night before saw the infamous vegan restaurant in a red Routemaster, got some interesting shots of that area and looked around a few more indoor markets working my way up to and along Brick Lane. Although not directly related to my artistic concerns I have to say that that area probably has the greatest variety of food stalls I have ever seen. Seriously, pick a country and I'm sure you could find a cuisine from it or its nearest neighbours.

Brick Lane continued the Sunday market theme. Stalls lined the road from Hanbury Street to Bethnal Green Road and produced another interesting photographic situation. Most people who know me will know my fascination with VW camper vans, well as I walked up Brick Lane I came across a very pretty and very shiny chrome Citron van acting as a mobile coffee stand. While not a VW it was very nice looking and with the sunlight reflecting off it, all the colourful people (I love how summer gets people in colours other than black, grey and blue) and the strong blue sky behind it I felt it would be worth a shot. Alas a common problem appeared, that of too many fast moving people.

In this shot I wanted people at the van and no or very few people around it. I didn't want people in front of me obscuring the van. As I may have said before this means I need to get my shot quickly however this doesn't always pan out. In this situation it was a relatively open space in the market, good for the image but also a place where people either walked faster or would pause for breath. In any case I spent quite sometime there trying for a shot and leaving unsure that I managed to get a decent one. As it turns out I think I got a couple of doozies.