Junk shop clothes will get you nowhere
Sep. 24th, 2007 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaI've been wandering in London again. Mostly in Greenwich, where I was delighted to discover that the Observatory is free. Maybe it's some kind of reward for people who manage to walk all the way up the hill to get there.
One of the best things about free museums is that you can tackle them piecewise. On Sunday, we poked and prodded at all the interactive sciencey bits in the North half of the Observatory. Then we wandered off; the South half can be another day's trip out some time. Had we paid, we'd have felt obliged to cover the whole museum in one day - and missed out on ambling around various little marketlets littered around the area. There's one huge indoor market - food stalls for about a third of it, and crafts for the rest. But there's also minor outbreaks of bric-a-brac and vintage clothes and furniture. I didn't buy anything, but I pottered round and peered and poked and was generally nosey.
We'd nosed into the food market pre-Observatory, decided that we hadn't quite digested breakfast, and headed away again. On returning, I'd reached that stage of combined greed and hunger where being let loose in a food market is financial ruin. Having been restrained from buying everything I retired to a nearby park with my haul of goodies. A vegetarian wrap, filled with stuff - on examination, it appeared to contain little other than lentils and a few chopped salad vegetables, but was gorgeous. A mysterious Italian snack food which looked like a breaded pear, but turned out to be full of rice, chicken and mozarella. A piece of cake made almost entirely of almonds and sticky. And a little box of tapas.
The tapas stall originally drew my attention because it had things which looked like sausage rolls, but which turned out to have Spanish black pudding in the middle. It also had breadsticks wrapped in Serrano ham, and slices of mushroom quiche. And a Spanish party game, which consists of a dish of pickled chillies. You eat one. Most are very mild, one in ten (ish) is fiery hot. The gentleman behind the stall invited me to play - I drew a mild one, which was a great relief. Because they were cheap, I added to my box of tapas two dates, stuffed with chopped almonds and wrapped in bacon.
Post-picnic, I was back at the tapas stall to buy the rest of his date-in-bacon stock which (sadly) by that time was only two. They're gorgeous - and, I presume, actually not hard to make. I've made devils-on-horseback (bacon wrapped round prunes, and baked) and I assume it's the same principle. I've so far resisted making myself an entire ovenful, but I fear it'll happen sooner or later.
We caught a boat up the Thames to Westminster, then wandered back along the South Bank to the Royal Festival Hall where we once again found a wonderful collection of artwork.
Unfortunately, it finishes tomorrow, but the RFH has been displaying the outcomes of the Deptford Design Market Challenge. 27 artists were challenged to find "something" at Deptford Market, and either re-make or re-interpret it as a piece of art.
On the face of it, that sounds like a design brief out of which something genuinely wanky could come forth. However, the results were surprisingly likable. A punchbowl and glasses recreated as a chandelier. An old-fashioned lamp made into a birdhouse. A stool, recovered with a collage of market fabric. Many more were not functional, but genuine works of art created out of junk. The works were displayed on trestles, amid a sea of junkshop items. The junk had been spraypainted a matte white, so it faded into insignificance while making an ideal backdrop.
"Before" and "After" photos are available on the website, though really they're not a patch on seeing things in the real. Anyone in London with a boring, long lunchbreak should really pop over to the RFH tomorrow. Really - their coffee's not bad, either.
One of the best things about free museums is that you can tackle them piecewise. On Sunday, we poked and prodded at all the interactive sciencey bits in the North half of the Observatory. Then we wandered off; the South half can be another day's trip out some time. Had we paid, we'd have felt obliged to cover the whole museum in one day - and missed out on ambling around various little marketlets littered around the area. There's one huge indoor market - food stalls for about a third of it, and crafts for the rest. But there's also minor outbreaks of bric-a-brac and vintage clothes and furniture. I didn't buy anything, but I pottered round and peered and poked and was generally nosey.
We'd nosed into the food market pre-Observatory, decided that we hadn't quite digested breakfast, and headed away again. On returning, I'd reached that stage of combined greed and hunger where being let loose in a food market is financial ruin. Having been restrained from buying everything I retired to a nearby park with my haul of goodies. A vegetarian wrap, filled with stuff - on examination, it appeared to contain little other than lentils and a few chopped salad vegetables, but was gorgeous. A mysterious Italian snack food which looked like a breaded pear, but turned out to be full of rice, chicken and mozarella. A piece of cake made almost entirely of almonds and sticky. And a little box of tapas.
The tapas stall originally drew my attention because it had things which looked like sausage rolls, but which turned out to have Spanish black pudding in the middle. It also had breadsticks wrapped in Serrano ham, and slices of mushroom quiche. And a Spanish party game, which consists of a dish of pickled chillies. You eat one. Most are very mild, one in ten (ish) is fiery hot. The gentleman behind the stall invited me to play - I drew a mild one, which was a great relief. Because they were cheap, I added to my box of tapas two dates, stuffed with chopped almonds and wrapped in bacon.
Post-picnic, I was back at the tapas stall to buy the rest of his date-in-bacon stock which (sadly) by that time was only two. They're gorgeous - and, I presume, actually not hard to make. I've made devils-on-horseback (bacon wrapped round prunes, and baked) and I assume it's the same principle. I've so far resisted making myself an entire ovenful, but I fear it'll happen sooner or later.
We caught a boat up the Thames to Westminster, then wandered back along the South Bank to the Royal Festival Hall where we once again found a wonderful collection of artwork.
Unfortunately, it finishes tomorrow, but the RFH has been displaying the outcomes of the Deptford Design Market Challenge. 27 artists were challenged to find "something" at Deptford Market, and either re-make or re-interpret it as a piece of art.
On the face of it, that sounds like a design brief out of which something genuinely wanky could come forth. However, the results were surprisingly likable. A punchbowl and glasses recreated as a chandelier. An old-fashioned lamp made into a birdhouse. A stool, recovered with a collage of market fabric. Many more were not functional, but genuine works of art created out of junk. The works were displayed on trestles, amid a sea of junkshop items. The junk had been spraypainted a matte white, so it faded into insignificance while making an ideal backdrop.
"Before" and "After" photos are available on the website, though really they're not a patch on seeing things in the real. Anyone in London with a boring, long lunchbreak should really pop over to the RFH tomorrow. Really - their coffee's not bad, either.
