Re-familiarising myself with the city

I've been back in Melbourne for a few months now.  Before this second wave of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown that we've now found ourselves in, I managed to head into the city to look at some of the best buildings.  

John Wardle's design for the new Conservatorium of Music building on Southbank Boulevard is exceptional.  Its oblong shape and protruding flaps and slits in the facade is as though it's allowing the music being practiced, performed and assessed inside to bellow out over the city.  For virtuosity, creativity and intellect to assert itself on the city's mentality. 

The facade is built with this elegant pink and gold flecked terrazzo-like stone combined with these oval shaped pieces of red stone that are meticulously inset in little crevices.  The oval shape of these stone pieces obviously recall music notes and the vast and seemingly random culmination of them all over the facade remind the viewer of the endless possibility of music composition.

A moment with Tilda Swinton

A few months following my encounter with Joanna Hogg described in the previous post, I saw her again at the BFI Southbank introducing her first film Caprice.  Tilda Swinton, who is in this film, and celebrating a current retrospective at the BFI, was present also.  This film was made in 1986 and is quite a direct souvenir of this period, visually and thematically, but also personally for Hogg and Swinton.  They were making underground, experimental films during this period, working collaboratively with like-minds, such as Derek Jarman.  Now they're making films with a similar working process that are more widely-known and distributed, and of course often made on bigger budgets.  

That evening, with an imminent global pandemic-induced lockdown looming, I met Tilda Swinton outside the cinema.  I had in my hands a copy of Jarman's Modern Nature, which I was about to take with me to read on the Tube home.  As she walked down the corridor, and probably sensing my desire to connect, she stopped and said hello to me.  I mentioned that I'm a massive fan of her work and her collaboration with Jarman.  She asked if I'd been to Prospect Cottage yet, and I mentioned that I had a (an ill-fated) train trip booked there for the following week.  Again, I couldn't quite articulate what I wanted to express to her: the influence that her creativity, wisdom, and filmmaking has had on me- the profound sense of kindredness that I gain from her presence on screen... that negates physical distance, different lived experiences.  She asked for my name, repeated it back to me in a thick Scottish accent, said "it was very nice to meet you" before she was off into the night. 

A very poor image taken on my phone of Tilda Swinton & Joanna Hogg introducing their film

Post-film reverie 

It's the period after seeing a film on the big screen that I cherish the most.  Particularly after seeing a Jarman film.  This evening was my first encounter of his work outside of seeing it on my tiny computer screen in my bedroom back in Melbourne.  Tilda Swinton, Sandy Powell, Annie Symons, Simon Fisher Turner and Seamus McGarvey were present to introduce his The Garden as part of the BFI's Swinton retrospective.  They talked about the significance of the current appeal to save his Prospect Cottage.  Being within the presence of these tantalising creative minds fulfilled a dream of mine, but it was the subsequent hour after the film: my walk along the Thames to Butler's Wharf that was particularly memorable.  Inspired by Jarman's practical creativity and his diaristic writing that brimmed with personal meaning and observation, and with the powerful images of The Garden still crystal clear in my mind, I encountered a few things and wrote them down on my phone:

A fox came running down an alley by the Borough Market, slid behind some bins and then came to stand right in front of me. He had fierce brown eyes that were begging for food. Then he ran off into the market probably to graze for fish off-cuts.   

The sound of jogging footsteps, people walking over steel bridges, party boats along the Thames, laughing boyfriends and girlfriends, the sound of a man sifting through sand on the banks of the Thames, looking for historic pottery, groups of teenagers sitting around drinking and arguing with each other. 

I cut through an underpass at Blackfriars Station.  On the tiled walls are black and white mosaics depicting the construction of the nearby bridges over the Thames, and the industrial activities that took place along this stretch of the river.  I stand there looking at them, with the sounds associated with a modern city forming part of the atmosphere.  I cast my mind back to the 1700s.  Standing in the present, dreaming of the past.  

I cross the road to avoid a group of drunk football player-like men loitering outside a pub. Looking as though they're searching for the next (most likely) queer person to point and laugh at.  

Tilda Swinton, Sandy Powell, Simon Fisher Turner & Seamus McGarvey

introducing The Garden

L’istesso tempo

At the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments in Oxford, my tour guide and good friend, Nick, took me to see the original prototype of his own harpsichord model (1st image).  

The museum contains a large collection of instruments, mostly keyboard instruments, strewn around for musicians to practice on.  When we asked at the reception where the specific type of Nick's harpsichord (thought to possibly be Handel's personal instrument) was located, we were directed to the back of the museum where there was a gentleman playing soft Baroque music.  We got chatting to the musician and sat to watch him rehearse.  I learnt a lot about this instrument from Nick and from the harpsichordist... and also from listening out for all the details that Nick had mentioned that are specific to this type of model.  The chance encounter with the musician and the sheer amount of harpsichords in the museum, all with vague histories and provenances, made me think deeply about time and presence.  All of these harpsichords had been played at some point over the last few hundred years... they have been touched by many fingers and emanated a beautiful sound.

 

Nick's harpsichord in Oxford

The many open doors of Cambridge

My visit to the colleges consisted mostly of walking through any open door that I came across as there was a fierce wind and I wanted to get out of it.  This led, of course, to many nice surprises.  Many silent hallways and highly decorative college chapels to be found through these doors.  Then there's the fireplace at Kettle's Yard Housemuseum.  A really special place. 

I finished the day at the King's College Chapel with an organ recital of music by Hollins, Vierne and Leighton.   It was fairly recent music that traversed different heights and ranges.   The fierce wind continued to thrash itself against the windows and walls of the chapel.  It became a competition between the assertion of the wind and the bellow of the organ as to what sound could occupy the architecture of the chapel. 

The Souvenir 

Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir is one of my favourite films.  Following my first viewing of the film at last year's MIFF in August, I was very lucky to have met Hogg at the end of last year in London.  It was a brief encounter at the end of a Q&A.  My nerves prevented me from succinctly conveying to her what the film meant to me, so I hope these rambling thoughts below can make up for that.

This evening I watched the film with my Aunt Janet on the TV at home.  After the film we had a long and passionate debate about it.  Janet found the film ultimately unsatisfying and disengaged.  This was, she argued, in part due to the lack of weight and importance Hogg gives to language.  Janet found that this suppressed the potential layers of the protagonists' psychology and complexity.

I'm not naturally drawn to the power of language, particularly in film.  In the case of Hogg's film, it is the emphasis given to the silences and ambiguities in between spoken communication; what isn't said, which drives the film and compels me as the viewer.  I argued that the medium of film is less indebted to language and speech than the theatre is, where the performer is conscious of their audience's presence.  In the case of experiencing film, I personally find it's more about the witnessing of authentic human behaviour and the acute visual language and technical skill of the filmmaker and how cogently these mesh together.  I think that the utilising of a semi-improvisational technique, with non-actors in the case of The Souvenir, creates a separate and distinct psychological complexity in the absence of language.  As such the experience of viewing the film is one that is filled with questions and self reflection with no specific answers fed back.

I was really pleased to see The Souvenir for the first time at the grand Capitol Theatre in the city.  I went to the screening with my Mum, who had a very different intuitive response to the film than her sister, my Aunt, had.  My Mum is a more visual and nostalgic person and is easily swayed by artistic works that speak to her own experience.  Mum understood and connected to Hogg's Julie and understood the influence and liberation of the setting of 1980s London (having lived there at that time as a twenty year old).  I also have a very similar relationship with my Mum as Julie and her mother Rosalind have in the film.  Janet is a frequent reader and gains much pleasure from fiction created by words.  I gather that perhaps this inclination influenced her opinion of the film and her frustration with its grappling of language.  It's difficult to have the same expectations of viewing a film as being immersed in a literary work.  

On another note, it must also be mentioned that it felt right seeing the film with 400 other cinephiles in Walter Burley-Griffin's 1920s designed (and recently refurbished) cinema.  Its flamboyant art deco style and respectful refurbishment seemed to architecturally complement Hogg's treatment of timelessness and her reinterpretation of the past.

In the cinema foyer, post-Q&A, my brief interaction with Hogg consisted of me repeatedly saying "it's a fantastic, fantastic film" over and over again.  I did mention that I first saw the film with my Mum, and that that was a special experience as the film felt like it really spoke to the particular relationship I have with her.  We also went on to discuss 1980s London as I'd mentioned I had recently arrived here.  She mentioned that the London depicted in her film is one that has now gone out with the tide of time.

A still from The Souvenir which exemplifies Hogg's treatment of space:
one space as the sole location of the film & the container of memory and emotion experienced
over a specific point in one's life... much alike Chantal Akerman's work.  Through the focus 
on one space, the viewer cements the space's dynamic in their own memory. 

These are images I took of Jean Cocteau's 1960 mural depicting The Annunciation, The Assumption, and the Crucifixion of Christ.  

The mural can be seen in a little cavern in a rather strange and unassuming French Roman-Catholic church off a busy street in Soho. On a Wednesday lunchtime there were people sleeping everywhere across the pews and floor. Having a midday rest, and snoring pretty loudly too, which echoed through the church. Being surrounded by sleep and snoring contributed to my dreamlike encounter with Cocteau's unexpected mural. I have never encountered figures as engaging as Cocteau's in a church before. Cocteau mentioned that the process of painting the mural "has drawn me into another world". His self portrait can be seen on the lower centre in the first image, looking pensive toward the viewer and away from The Crucifixion scene.

The scarf that my Mum knitted for me, using wool that we chose together back in Melbourne, arrived in London by post the other day (refer to this blog post from last September).  I wore it on a trip out to Canterbury today.  Here it is on the table on the high-speed train there.

The 2019 Summer Bushfires felt from a distance

 

I feel utterly useless reading the news coverage on the bushfires raging through NSW and Western Victoria from here in London. Earlier in the year I took a trip along the South Coast of NSW, where the fires are currently burning, to spend some time with a photographer friend. I had made my way way up there alone on a VLine bus that drove along a continuously windy road. The road cut through tall gums and eventually opened up to the divine coast. I remember the town centres and the trees and the beautiful untouched beaches that we'd walk down to swim at everyday.

On our last day on the coast we had lunch sitting under an oak tree in the town centre of Cobargo before we headed home. It was a perfectly clear day and the hills were green on the drive in to town. I've seen pictures of the now fire ravished Cobargo town centre. It's an incredibly strange and inarticulate feeling seeing somewhere familiar in a state of crisis. It's even more strange being on the other side of the world where the climate is consistently cold and damp at this time of year.

For this last post of the year I've attached an image of a print by my neighbour back in Melbourne, Ros Atkins.

Guardian, 2001, Rosalind Atkins

Culinary Christmas memory

For Christmas lunch Janet and I cooked a whole Sea Bass that we got at the market the other day and we had it with roast winter vegetables. I worked on and improvised a salad of scallops, lettuce, fennel, little radishes, avocado and blood orange. Mid way through cooking the scallops on the stove- and at the crucial point- the stove turned itself off and we couldn't work out a way of turning it back on. All hell let loose as we frantically flipped through manuals and angrily slammed kitchen drawers. Was a refreshing and delicious salad in the end nonetheless.

We had a quince crumble dessert too, so all was very seasonal to winter. My first cold Christmas as well.

Autumn to winter

Winter begins in a week here. It's definitely feeling winterish. I still see cars driving around the streets with autumn leaves stuck to the bonnet. 

Post-Dorsky viewing 

I've been thinking about the textures of plants, and of natural light hitting plants in various ways after having the privilege of viewing all six films in Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle. These films, as Dorsky has described them, are plants in themselves, filled with light. 

These pictures I've taken here can in no way be associated with the intense poetry of Dorsky's work.  Instead they're evidence that, after seeing the films, I have been inspired to see light in new and different ways. 

The first few pictures were taken in rare afternoon light in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, that made everything glow for a brief window of time:

Arboretum Cycle

Arboretum Cycle

This is the view looking out from a window in the flat.  It has a great, vast view of the neighbourhood.  I look out here every morning as I'm huddled by the heater and can see the world opening up for the day ahead: I see steam rising from houses, trains zooming passed, and this big blocky building that sticks out like a sore thumb. 

On birds

I watched a woman trying to quietly take a picture of a swallow on the train station platform this morning. The bird flew away before she'd got her desired shot and she turned to look at me in disappointment.

On the same day, while resting on a bench at the Royal Academy forecourt, I watched a little girl chase after some pigeons. She was carefully measuring her footsteps and pace so they wouldn't fly away. She then took one step too far and they all flew away.

Three portraits 

The first painting, by Meredith Frampton, reminded me of my Aunt (who I am living with here). I think it's the woman's tall build that resembles my Aunt's figure, her thinking expression and also the objects that surround this woman in Frampton's painting. My Aunt's small flat has ceramic vases on display, piles of books and sheet music and a harpsichord that she plays every morning. I suppose these objects tell you something about her; interests and so forth. 

Thinking about these objects and speculating on my Aunt's connection to them is particularly significant to how I'm beginning to spend my time here and getting used to being in my Aunt's company. I think that the woman's violin and the vase in Frampton's painting suggests a lot about the kind of person this woman is. 

Portrait of a Young Woman, 
Meredith Frampton

Lucy McKenzie from a great show at
Cabinet, Vauxhall

Isabella of France, 
Walter Richard Sickert

The second painting, by Lucy McKenzie, depicts a woman (a little mannequin-like) in relation to the city (Glasgow) and her accompanying objects. This woman and this map of central Glasgow were repeated images throughout her exhibition at Cabinet, Vauxhall as were the objects that appear beside her in this painting, such as the red chair with the curved back and the red silk she is gently holding.

The third, a painting of actress Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Queen Isabella of France in Marlowe's Edward II, is a depiction of the actress on stage. I'm not quite sure why I picked this one out, but I presume I was thinking of Derek Jarman's film adaptation of the play. Thinking of the comparison between this 1932 painting by Sickert and Jarman's queer interpretation of the play. This painting seems to remain as a souvenir of this particular production, while I'm still searching for remnants of Jarman's work around London. Apparently Sickert became a good friend of the actress after writing her a fan letter in the 1930s. Being in London for me is, to an extent, about my love for Jarman's work and the passionate life that is recorded in his diaries. I saw Sickert's painting on my visit to Tate Britain.

Some patterns I've come across in London:

The floor on the 2nd level of the ICA.  
Designed by Jennie Moncur, it's a permanent 
part of the building's identity

The ceiling of the King's College London
Chapel, which is to be unexpectedly found in 
an unassuming room off what is an ordinary
upper-level corridor

Italian Maiolica pottery dating from the 1500s.
I have never come across this type of pottery 
before in the flesh and was surprised to find out
that it's that old.  To my naive eye, the patterns
and colours look so modern

Two women embracing surrounded by all
manner of animals and objects

Another Italian Maiolica pot from the same 
display at the Wallace Collection.  
I was drawn to the shape of the jug
and the elegance of the patterns

I thought that this unevenly-shaped detail
on the side of Southwark Cathedral looked
like squashed oyster shells.  I think I thought
this because I had just come out of the fish 
section of the Borough Market where I'd been 
considering purchasing half a dozen oysters to 
eat for lunch... and then laid eyes on this detail.
It was an interesting material to find wedged 
between between massive weights of stone

I've noticed so many cranes across Central London as I've walked from place to place. They seem at odds with London's centuries old buildings. This one is right on the River Thames.

Thinking about the rapidly changing London, I came across this busker playing cheerful 1920's music on a tuba that breathes fire. I instantly thought of Joanna Hogg's 2013 film Exhibition which I believe this exact man appears in, playing similar music in the film on his fire-tuba. I've been thinking a lot about Hogg's films since arriving here. 

On that note, when I was in Kensington I walked to find the James Melvin designed house that was used in Hogg's Exhibition. The house was used in the film like another character and implied as being like a child to the childless artist couple portrayed in the film. When selling the house, the character 'D' is anxious that the next occupants might demolish it. Subsequently, I was shocked to find that the Melvin house had recently been pulled down completely and the foundations laid for another building on the site. 

I read that the house was designed by the architect in the 1960s for his family to live in. Exhibition is kind of about the preservation of the house for future use and to protect the vision of the architect. From what I had seen, it appeared to have an uplifting interior with a spiral staircase, hot pink sliding doors and lots of room for children to run around. The final scene of children playing in the house optimistically implies that the house is in good hands and will continue to carry meaning and memories for generations to come.

From watching the film, I got the impression that the house related to the street really cleverly with nice views through big windows looking out to the surrounding terraced rooftops and to a church spire in the nearby High Street. I was interested in seeing all of this for myself on my visit there. I think that new residential developments often fail at achieving the qualities seen in this house; lacking connection to the architect, neighbourhood and city and therefore disregarding the potential for creativity and dreaming within the viewer (occupant).

I presume that there are quite a few buildings of this era and style being pulled down across London right now as it rapidly modernises to meet the 21st century's shiny, sterile, commercialised needs. The inner boroughs are becoming more heavily built up, which is a real shame. 

This article indicates that it has been at risk of being demolished for some time: https://c20society.org.uk/casework/set-piece-a-finely-refurbished-and-ingenious-house-is-at-risk/ 

Looking out from within & vice versa

The various vistas at the Tate Modern Herzog & de Meuron building- looking out to nearby buildings and the cityscape and down to the Turbine Hall where visitors gather. While walking through the building the visitor is regularly reminded of the museum and its extensive collection of art being posed in relation to the city.

^ Marwan Rechmaoui's sculpture of a building in Beirut that cannot be demolished due to it being too tall and too dense, remaining completely intact during the Lebanese Civil War. Instead it remains today as a memorial to the conflict as well as a symbol of defiance during that time.

                            

An English arrival 

On Sunday, the day after I arrived here in London, I went for my first walk in the Wimbledon Common. I took some pictures of the trees, only three so far because there were so many people with dogs hanging around all the trees that were of interest to me. There are many really mature trees here and I like the idea that they have been around much longer than me.

This: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/23/liverpools-1000-year-old-oak-is-englands-tree-of-the-year?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco