My second trip to the Hayward Gallery confirmed my delight with it from the first. My favourite pieces in this exhibit were "Show Room" by Los Carpinteros and "Place" by Rachel Whiteread. The two pieces were in adjacent rooms.
We saw "Show Room" first. It consisted of a life size living room, bedroom and bathroom. Some force had blasted a hole through the cinder block "external" wall of the living room and the scene was frozen mid-destruction,
Matrix style. To create such a scene, pieces of wall and furniture and debris were suspended from the ceiling with fishing line, bathing the whole scene in a beautiful almost glittering light, except "glittering" is the wrong word since it suggests some movement and the scene was breathtakingly still. The furniture was all plain and bare and mostly white (the rugs and bedspread were red). There was nothing in the rooms except the furniture: no knickknacks, appliances, toiletries, etc., the lack of which contributed to the stillness contrasting the chaos.
Next door, we stepped into a dark cold night in a crowded hillside town of dollhouses. The houses were all empty, but warm and inviting light spilled from the windows. For me, Whiteread's "Place" evoked the same sensation as driving alone along a dark road in western NY, occasionally passing a house, strung with Christmas lights, off on a hill, at once making you feel more alone, since the warmth and life there is one to which you are not invited, and less, for the evidence of fellow humanity at all.
We also got to wallow in boats on a lovely rooftop pool. I say wallow instead of "row" or "paddle" since maneuvering of these unseaworthy tubs proved beyond our ability in the few minutes we were given. I think it would have been better not to try, and instead to just enjoy floating over London.
On another of the gallery's terraces was a theatre, the interior of which was beautiful. The canvas walls allowed a lovely light to filter in. The curved walls were lined with delicate slats, reminding me of the gills of the underside of a mushroom. They were showing several films on a loop. I usually find art films difficult to appreciate, and this one particularly so. Being sick, I was already woozy and dizzy and then this film was from the viewpoint of some guy exploring the crawl spaces between the walls and rooms of a house. Over and under and squeezing through, peering around, up and down, with the light from the partly cloudy day outside and the shifting spotlights on the walls inside all contriving to make me quite nauseous.
The big sphere outside was pleasant from the bottom, but we didn't get to go into the top part. Entrance was on a "lucky dip" system, and we never even figured out how to qualify for it.
In the summer of 2009, the European Go Congress will be held in Groningen, The Netherlands. Two years ago, when I was in China studying Go, Walther and I promised Siu (right, with Zhang Pei Pei) we would attend his congress. (Walther and Siu were fellow students of mine in China, and Siu's club is the one hosting the 2009 EGC.)
