We just popped down to Sussex on Sunday for a couple of days to celebrate a very good friends 50th birthday
Lovely gentle Sussex, where the sun always shines and it never rains and there is cherry blossom on the trees all year round!
The family came too. Robin, just visible on the left, Ollie in the middle, and, Jo.....well, I must have a word with Jo!
It was warm enough to sit outside and not feel the slightest bit chilly in the balmy early evening air
We enjoyed the company of some old and very good friends and made some new ones too.
We soaked up a little bit of London,
and watched the skate boarders on the south bank
We went to one of the main exhibits in the
Tate Modern (the free one basically, in the vast industrial sized Turbine Hall.) Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist has filled the enormous space with 100 million sunflower seeds - each one individually sculptured in porcelain and each one different from the other. I think he had a little bit of help but the shear size and scale is impressive
We walked up and down. It didn't matter that we couldn't understand it. The enormous undulating carpet of sunflower seeds held us spell bound. What happens at the end of the exhibition? Where do all the seeds go?
It's sad to think that the artist responsible was arrested by the
Chinese authorities earlier this month as he tried to board a plane to Hong Kong. His whereabouts is still unknown.
We flew back home on Wednesday with a little wooden hand and a pencil - a souvenir from our travels!
I would just like to say how touched I was by all the kind comments I found on my blog when I got back. 'Thank you' Your comments are all so very encouraging. And twenty five followers I feel honoured.
5 comments:
"We just popped down to Sussex...." Love it!
'Just popped down'??? Looks like you had a lovely time - it's great to catch up with friends isn't it?
I often 'don't get' modern art, but I love the sunflower seeds. I certainly wouldn't have had the patience to create something like that. And yes, it's sad that the artist is missing, I heard on the radio that he'd been arrested at the airport, but didn't know that he is still missing...
Dan
-x-
I love the picture of the family...the woman with her mouth open is obviously where your eye is drawn initially, but the complexity and subtlety of the interactions between all the people and the camera (and photographer!) has been beautifully caught.
Oh dear! The woman with her mouth open is my daughter; reacting, no doubt, to her mother, attempting yet another 'family photo opportunity' from across the other side of the garden!
you might be interested in this link: http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2011/04/seeds-of-disssent-poem-for-ai-weiwei.html
it tells a bit about the sunflower seeds and their meaning
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