King's Cross: Art and Exhibitions

King's Cross, London, has recently been bursting with events, so I decided to check them out. I went last Saturday, first stopping at Euston Square station to visit the Wellcome Collection, then moving onto the King's Cross events: Canopy Market, CSM Degree Show, and Francis Crick Institute exhibition. All these events are free, so perfect for students like me on a bit of a budget!

The Wellcome Collection is a museum that combines medicine and art. I had heard about the Somewhere in Between exhibition from a newspaper, and since I'm studying Dentistry and am generally quite interested in the sciences, I thought I'd make a visit. It was a very interesting exhibition which opened my eyes to a lot of things I'd never thought about before, and I particularly enjoyed the films on mirror-touch synaesthesia called Sensorium Tests and At the Threshold.

After, I discovered two other exhibitions currently on at the Wellcome Collection. Teeth was the one that excited me the most (being a dental student!), and I would have stayed for longer than the hour I had if I could have. Modern Medicine was the other, a smaller exhibition that introduced medicine in recent news and had interesting artistic interpretations of major diseases.

At this point, it was time for lunch and I was starving. I decided to get something from the Canopy Market. Being a big pasta-lover, I was instantly drawn to the Love Farina stall, where an Italian family was selling fresh pasta. I ordered a bowl of spinach tagliatelle (purely because it was green and looked cool) with ragu bolognese. The man, Enrico, made the pasta onsite, right in front of my eyes, and it was delicious.

I also visited the other stalls, where I had a bit of a naughty moment and bought a giant slice of lemon and blueberry cake from Luminary Bakery and three cannoli (Sicilian pastry) from Casa Cannoli. I ate them all in one day, but they were so good I can't even regret it!

Right next to the market was the UAL CSM Degree Show One - an exhibition of fine art produced by the BA and MA students of UAL. It was really...interesting? If I'm honest, I was actually very confused most the time. I like looking at art, but perhaps I miss that certain something that allows me to fully understand it? I went through the rooms appreciating the way things looked and how they were made, and enjoyed myself, even if I didn't get it. There was one area that didn't go completely above my head, the science & art area, surprise surprise. There were works on refraction, magnetic repulsion, and an awesome one where the movement of a film reel was linked to the artist's heartbeat, so every time it beat, the film would pass along with a click.

Unfortunately part one has finished, however, the second part, based on fashion, drama, and graphics, is coming up late June, which I would love to go to but I'll be in Cornwall on holiday. I'm genuinely disappointed that I won't be able to see it, I feel like I would've enjoyed it much more than the first one.

And finally, I ended my visit to King's Cross with a trip to the Francis Crick Institute. As you can tell by now, I'm a science girl, so I wanted to check out the Deconstructing Patterns exhibition there. This was definitely a more difficult exhibition to understand, and not really aimed at those with no scientific background knowledge. I found some of it difficult to understand myself, and due to the time pressure as it was near closing time, I couldn't stay for long enough to properly figure everything out. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this exhibition as much as the others I'd seen that day.

Overall, it was a lovely trip, and I would definitely recommend visiting all these places! The Wellcome Collection was a favourite, as was the food in the Canopy Market. The CSM fashion show looks amazing, so if you're around, don't forget to have a peek!

♥

I love you

xxx

Barbican Centre: Conservatory & Exhibition

One of the perks of living in central London is that there is always something to see or somewhere to go, and all within a 10-minute walk.

The Barbican Centre is one of those places for me, and whilst I haven't taken full advantage of this yet (I can so easily watch films!), I did take a Sunday afternoon exploring the Barbican Conservatory. It's strangely only open on selected Sundays, but thankfully all the upcoming dates are on the website.

It's an incredibly peaceful place, filled with exotic leafy plants and fish. There's a separate arid room for the cacti, which I was excited to see, as well as a staircase that leads to an upper walkway lined with grasses and vines.

As I was leaving the centre, I noticed an exhibition that looked interesting - it's called Purple, by John Akomfrah. I didn't really look into it that much and only spent 15 minutes or so in there, but from what I gathered it was a film about global warming and climate change, told in a series of videos on 6 screens. It was really cool actually, and I would've stayed longer if I was able to. It was hypnotising - the images, words, and especially the sounds. I felt like a changed person when I left, which isn't a bad thing! I'd recommend going, there are only a few more days until it's gone (7th January), but it's free and was really quite good.

With the Barbican Centre so conveniently close, I'm definitely going to visit more often!

♥

I love you

xxx

Saatchi Gallery and British Museum Exhibitions

Hiya!

I went to London yesterday, there are a few exhibitions going on which seemed interesting.

First was the Chanel Mademoiselle Prive exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. It's about Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, and Haute Couture fashion, such as diamonds and the Chanel No5 perfume.

It was very interesting (very sparkly and 'fabricy'), and I got a free tote bag out of it :) The queue to go in, however, had me waiting for over an hour outside.

I then went to the British Museum, to check out two exhibitions - the first being 'Drawing in silver and gold'. It had drawings from artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and took you through the various styles of metalpoint drawings in different eras and countries.

I must say, though it sounds uninteresting, the drawings themselves had so much detail and attention put into them, it was hard not to be amazed by the fine lines and strokes, that apparently were hard to erase and so the artists had to have the whole thing planned out beforehand. So much effort!

The second exhibition was on the Celts, called 'Celts: art and identity'. It was alright, there was a lot of bronze and gold jewellery ('torcs' I learned, was the name they gave to bands around the neck) which was cool to look at.

However, at this point I think I'd had enough of exhibitions, so I quickly scanned the artefacts without reading about them in much detail. It was a massive exhibition anyway.

After I went to Chinatown for dinner and had the biggest dessert ever which I came to regret. It was a spontaneous decision; I had no idea what was in the dessert and no idea how big it would be. It tasted good at first, but I think the mixture of not knowing what I was eating and being too stuffed from the main put me off it quite quickly.

Ah well, photos will be up soon, once I get them onto my computer :)

♥

P.S. Guess what? I just realised it's been exactly a year since my last post about the Chinese Ming Dynasty exhibition in the British Museum! What a coincidence, the exact date...I guess these exhibitions all occur at the same time each year...

Wow my writing style has changed...(!)

I love you

ttyl

xxx