Hiya dear you!
Just dropping in to share my trip to London with you.
My friend Karina and I went to London last week (for 4 nights) to visit the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Victoria & Albert Museum and for me also to go to the Mew concert at Barbican.
My pictures are crappy (I blame the camera ;-)) but here goes (pic below = link):
Karina never visited London before so I was playing tour guide and showed her as much as I could in five days and we saw a lot, we both lost 3 kilos from walking (and it wasn’t from the beer and pub grub!)
We were blessed with beautiful weather, and it does make London a more friendly place. Too often I walked around in dreary London rain (which does suit the city very well) and I do prefer sunny skies, it just makes life a bit more pleasant.
We stayed at a lovely AirBnB and it is a bit like living there, our very own house. We both felt right at home and we loved the Angel area where the house was located (Islington) which I also wasn’t very familiar with.
So in no particular order we visited places like Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Westminster, SOHO/Chinatown, Liberty department store (with the Christmas floor already open), Camden, Borough Market, Spitalfields Market, Brick Lane, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Columbia Road Flower Market, Sunday Up Market, Portobello Road Market (Notting Hill), Whitechapel (Gallery), Tate Modern, Tate Britain and ofcourse Victoria & Albert Museum.
And I had to visit Treadwell’s and Watkins bookstores (apologies Karina for lingering so long!!) – so great to visit the places where I have ordered from so many times. There was so much choice I ended up buying nothing, I always go blank when I have too many options.
Frida
So on Friday the main goal of our trip, the exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (if you are interested, do check the link and see the pictures, audio and video there)
So what to make of this exhibition? As usual I keep going from one thought to another. First thing that comes to mind is inspiration. Inspiration to live life with passion no matter what life throws at us. Keep creating, keep going, don’t give up. And also you yourself are a creation and there is no shame in seeing yourself as a work of art. This exhibition is more a life story than an art exhibit. I have mixed feelings about all that is on show, on one hand it is exciting to see all these very personal items up close, on the other hand it feels a bit like breaking the boundaries of privacy. V&A has been able to borrow items from the Blue House to put on display, things such as photographs, jewellery, cosmetics, medicines, and clothing. Also her corsets, harnesses, prosthetic leg, and pictures of her legs in callipers, confined to a wheelchair and even painting lying down in bed. There are also personal (love) letters and pictures from her youth, so this exhibit is very personal and makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, like a voyeur. But I am also overwhelmed by respect for her, for her keeping herself up like she did while she had a life of medical horrors from the age of six until her death at 47. And being shallow little me, I love her style in clothing and this became key to how Kahlo shaped her identity in a more meaningful way: intertwining her disability with her political beliefs (“Frida was aware of the power of clothes from a very young age,” says Circe Henestrosa, the co-curator of the V&A show who created the exhibition’s originator. “Her fragmented body would inform her wardrobe as much as it was to inform the constant pain of her existence and the core of her art”) and her art and there are some wonderful pieces on display. I would have loved to have seen more paintings, but I guess this isn’t the focus of the exhibit.
What do I need feet for if I have wings to fly?
Let’s celebrate Frida Kahlo for her work, for her, for her art. She was a work of art, a creation made magical by her imagination. When I look at her personal items I don’t connect to her like I do when I look at her art, when we look at her art we see the real Frida, we see her soul.
Mew
I have been a fan of the Danish band Mew for years and years and I couldn’t miss out on the chance to see them on stage in London, so I planned our London trip so I could make this concert…and I am so glad I did! Mew’s music is beautifully melodic in parts, atmospheric, hauntingly experimental yet distorted by vocals and instruments, it’s hard to pigeon hole them in a genre, they are unique and that is what I love. They played two shows in one day at the Barbican (amazing building by the way, learned about Brutalist architecture) and after the break (first half was a sort of best of Mew setlist) they played my fave album Frengers in full with a string quartet as well! It was a bit frustrating to be sitting and it was a Matinee which also feels strange for a concert, but what a gig! If they only turned down the volume a notch and the lights up a bit it would have been perfect (the very loud music drowned out the vocals and where we were sitting the music ‘sung’ around).
Setlist: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/mew/2018/barbican-centre-london-england-6396da07.html
And to end this picture and video heavy post, just some pictures of myself, because well this is my website and I can post what I like 😉
Bye now! Ta!
Love, Charissa
