WHAT I SAW LAST WEEK: 25th March
ZM
hello & welcome back to āØWHAT I SAW LAST WEEK!⨠ā my lil culture diary but public and also online and very un-spellchecked :)
last week i was soooo bamboozled at the prospect of a 4day weekend. i shouldāve just booked a cheap lil citybreak n got out of london to somewhere proper random, bc staying in london feels like work. ykwim? too close to being at work, too similar n familiar. i donāt have the organisational capacity for last minute travel tho, and i remembered that holidays exist far too late in the day. maybe i WILL go on holiday eventually! i dream of an all inclusive in spain or portugal, footlong blue drink, chlorine and saltwater beach sun smell and a lilo thatās shaped like a great big strawberry. maybe i would read bad paperbacks by the pool. maybe iād get day drunk n have to do my evening makeup with a wobbly hand. ugh, inject it.
anyway, i wound up in london and not that sad about it bc the weather was lovely. i also! saw some actual art last week ā can u believe it??? no more chit chat about lip balm and telly, time to get down to some proper art critic BUSINESSSSSSSSS
starting off with actually not an exhibition
went for dinner on drummond street!!! i think itās the ukās oldest strip of indian restaurants? i think diwana bhel poori house is actually the oldest indian restaurant in the uk, officially. n drummond street has the original flagship ambala ā prestigious. i prefer guptaās. but i think u actually canāt go wrong with any of the restaurants down drummond street. i think the actual restaurants and the streetās existence is vaguely threatened by the coming of hs2?? which is really sad. i hope it doesnāt disappear bc quite frankly the dishoomification of londonās central-and-central-adjacent indian restaurants is irritating. sick of kricketās indian deliveroo supremacy. sick of indian fast casual street food adjacent everywhere. sick of Ā£15 mini thalis. i want a fuckin old skl curry house buffet! itās nostalgic, itās perfect, the portion sizes are always decently massive. very pleasing. always run by bengali uncles, god bless them.
i took my white boyfriend and ā god bless this man. everytime we go to a nice good actually decent indian restaurant he goes āoh, itās just like the ones up north!!ā ā every time we go to one thatās dishoom adjacent n iām about to complain, he goes āoh, this is sooooo london. this is just what indian restaurants are like in londonā which is literally factually incorrect. but he did say āJUST LIKE THE ONES UP NORTHā on drummond street ā which is a kind of very high praise. we went to ravi shankar but, like you literally canāt have a bad dinner on drummond street. itās impossible!!! i love it!
new contemps
ey i havenāt been to see a new contemps since like, before the pandemic maybe? the last one i saw was in slg, i think ā itās been a while! n i do like the round up listicle-isation of it. even if itās very very sly of them to be charging literally poor students a whopping submission fee when theyāre literally sponsored by bloomberg ā very fucking cheeky icl. like, just ask bloomberg for the money!!! but, submission fees aside, itās just nice to see so many bits of art in one go. degree show but tidy. nice to meet some new names and hope i run into them at another exhibition in another time place and circumstance. so i finally managed to pop by, on a rando thursday w some Friends Of TWP jamie & luisa! n glad i did bc here are my favourite bits!
Soufiane Ababri @ barbican curve
so there is a massive push about censorship at barbican, artists are pulling their works from their big group slash survey show, itās literally unravelling ā pardon the pun bc itās like a fuckin fabric/textile art show. barbican are notoriously Bad at being Not Racist (remember barbican stories?), i know. so⦠PREFACE.
but i went to see the soufiane ababri show bc someone recommended it to me, i take recommendations very seriously. and it was really good art. barbican, cancelled. soufiane ababri? celebrated (by me) i enjoy when artists fuck with flatness and these were drawings that handled flattened perspective in a kinda cackhanded and yet also very very deft way. there was something about like, the way this toed up against or edged against the decorative, something about craft, lurid and lewd but in a very sweet way because the drawings were so neatly coloured in solid. like, block colour! warped angle flattened vision! the eye is a camera is the artist is the viewer!
also
nipped into the barbican conservatory bc ā & idk whatās going on atm, but i keep getting fucking london hidden gem recommendations on tiktok and itās like⦠columbia road. broadway market. camden passage. portobello road. iāve had enough, stop! i donāt want the twee tourist trap reccomendations, i am a LOCAL! stop telling tourists and transplants about all the cool stuff!!! bc now the barbican conservatory is SO BUSY. ENOUGH!
anyway thereās a ranjani shettar installation in the conservatory, art about plants in and amongst plants. itās like the only place itād make sense without being overly decorative or precious, delicate, ornate to the point of opulence. it was lovely! i rly like seeing art in Not A Gallery kinda context. more art in parks! botanical gardens! conservatories and tbh, while ur at it, whack some art in an underpass, under the flyover etc. put art anywhere u can fit it imo. itās just NICE!
smiley face
i think the internet is killing graffiti, this is too technologically aware it gives me the heebiejeebies. but itās also kinda like wow to see an emoticon smiley ā retro, no? and irl it has affect? iāve overthought this already, in like 3 sentences iāve overthought it.
i watched the first 20 mins of mad max and then fell asleep
but i think i got the gist? film club year!!! we move, iām knocking this one up on mine n my bfās shared coupleās letterboxād even at a runtime of 20 conscious minutes. very kinetic, frantic, bluebottle energy of a film. post-societal collapse, ofc we would imagine a stateless and lawless world like this, bc without rules and with power, this is what we think the world would look like. i think thatās vvv interesting. i also think this film is like a kind of ultimate capitalist fantasy rather than a world to fear without rules laws states or institutions. idk. iām reading this film v politically for someone who only saw the first 20 mins and then fell asleep. but i think the political is RIGHT THERE within it. maybe i should watch it again. no way iām gna convince my bf to watch it all over again bc he was a hostage audience, trapped watchign a film heād already seen while i snooze and pretend iām not snoozing right next to him in front of his eyeballs. poor guy!!!!
iām bringing back blogging
proper blogging, iām talkin TUMBLR baby!!!! i have resurrected my chronically dormant tumblr addiction bc honestly, itās just the best kind of social media. formative!!!! tumblr was FORMATIVE! for me! it wasnāt even like i had it on my phone way back when ā and i knew people who did ā i j used to scroll DESKTOP (CAN U IMAGINE???) iām bringing it back!!!! iām a new old tumblr user!!!! tumblr 4eva!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! blog blog blog blog blog!!! hehehehehe
my point actually is: iām using it instead of instagram n i will post bits and bobs from my life and my work there instead of on my personal instagram bc i can like,,,, link fun things iām reading! i can post music and videos and do lil text bits and post links to work! work life hobby, the big soup of it all. follow me on tumblr! if u like! like,,, government name in the url, thatās how u know i mean business. iām also not telling u what my og tumblr url was bc itās embarassing.
ok!!!! thatās all for now! love u have a ncie week!!! BYEEE!!!!!