Monday, 30 November 2009

Monday 30th November






























This photo makes me feel cold. Anish Kapoor's Tall Tree and the Eye in the Royal Academy courtyard.

Sunday 29th November






























With only two days until the onset of Winter, Autumn is being packed up and discarded.

Saturday 28th November






























An itemised list of all the clothes I wore to invigilate at Seizure today:
- a thermal top
- a cashmere jumper
- an arran wool jumper
- a down jacket
- a handmade woollen scarf wrapped around my neck three times
- woollen tights
- denim jeans
- explorer socks
- leather boots
- gloves
- beret
and I was still freezing.

Friday 27th November






























With £2.10 in my pocket saved for a hot chocolate to warm me up when I couldn't feel my toes anymore, I set off today to see where my feet would take me. This is the view over the Thames from Temple. It was nice to see a body of water, even if that makes me sound like a homesick Australian.

Thursday 26th November






























Today was grey again. I met Raoul for lunch in a funny Italian restaurant in Soho with a picture of Mick Jagger sandwiched between the owners in the window. We figured if it was good enough for Mick... Inside the restaurant you really felt like you could have been in Sicily rather than central London. This scene however, on the way back to Raoul's office, is just so quintessentially English to me.

Wednesday 25th November






























Today the sun came out for the first time in what felt like weeks. Something about this scene interested me. I think it was the abundance of scooters. I took this photograph minutes before a job interview during which, in response to the question of how well I worked within a team, I blurted out "I don't mind taking orders" and then laughed. I've really got to learn to be more articulate.

Tuesday 24th November






























Today I went to Liberty and imagined all the presents I would buy people for Christmas if I actually had an income. These are the gaudy Christmas decorations up in Carnaby Street. I felt like I had stepped into an Austin Powers film against my will. The deer was the only redeeming inflatable. Pity that you can only see its feet.

Monday 23rd November






























The man who owns this junk shop on Brick Lane seems to only be open on quiet days. Never ever on a Sunday when the masses infiltrate the East End. He seems to live in a caravan inside his garage of a shop. When I went in he was sitting in his caravan peering out at me through the back window. I desperately wanted a photo of him but was too scared to ask. The mirror out the front with the no-smoking sticker plastered across it cost an extortionate £60. I'm not sure that he gets too many buyers. Hence, perhaps, the caravan.

Sunday 22nd November






























When I was finally freed from the shackles of my bedroom we met Jade and Chris at the Albion for a Sunday brunch. No one was leaving because the weather was so vile outside, and so the line to wait for a table curled around the entire shopfront. We spent 45 minutes in the queue looking out the window and cursing the London weather. I spluttered all over the cupcakes and gingerbread men on display, but no one seemed to mind.

Tuesday 17th November - Saturday 21st November






























I didn't really think that swine flu existed until I got it. This photo covers the 5 days I spent quarantined in bed with only Jack Kerouac, a thermos and Twin Peaks for company.

Monday, 16 November 2009

Monday 16th November






























I have no explanation for this photograph. On a quiet backstreet in East London, miles from a duck pond and at least a block from the nearest bakery, on a street with no trees and thus no wildlife, I found this: a small pile of bite-sized bread.

Sunday 15th November
































Look at this little girl in her Converse sneakers and casually draped fur jacket. See her nonchalant expression, her suspicious eyeing of the coins in the busker’s bucket. Look at his concentration face, the synchronized tilt of his pompom, feet and knees. Look at the shit for sale on the footpath, the man tangled up with the dog in the background. The faces and races and fashions that make up Brick Lane on a Sunday.

Saturday 14th November






























When rubbish bins become rubbish at Hyde Park.

Friday 13th November






























Quite an eerie picture for Friday the 13th. These people were on Brick Line mysteriously handing out flyers for the Identity Project (I looked it up - it is an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection). All the passerbys were totally bewitched by these people with their blacked out faces, with everyone rushing to take a flyer in the hope of learning more. This east end hispter stopped to have a friend take her photo with them, and screamed in protest when one man put his black hat over her perfectly asymmetrical haircut. Head to toe in black she could easily have been one of them.

Friday, 13 November 2009

Thursday 12th November






























Tonight we went to see an amazing site-specific performance put on by Shunt. It was in an old tobacco warehouse in SE1. I love in London how you can be on an otherwise completely bleak corner, and then a few metres down you'll find an alleyway like this. On a clear night it would have been lovely in this courtyard. There were ping pong tables and giant chess boards, a tiki bar and deckchairs. But in the rain it just looked like a scene from Doctor Who.

Wednesday 11th November






























There is nothing remarkable about this photograph. But having a bath for the first time in three months was.

Tuesday 10th November






























Today I started a new internship at Art Review Magazine. I had done my hair nicely for my first day, but when I got off at Farringdon, without an umbrella, the sky opened onto me. I pulled the the hood of my new winter coat over my head and trudged my way through Clerkenwell to their office on Sekforde Street. There is something kind of clichéd about pictures of autumn leaves on a glistening pavement, but that is honestly about the only thing I saw on my journey there - I couldn't look up for the rain.

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Monday 9th November































Trust the sun to come out on the morning that we leave. One last breakfast of laughing cow cheese on dry, pre-packaged toast is all that is between this photo being taken and us boarding our Easy Jet flight home.

Sunday 8th November






























Today being a Sunday made it particularly difficult to navigate our way around Venice. Restaurants that we normally used as reference points were closed, leaving streets of sealed doorways and shuttered windows that all looked the same.

Saturday 7th November






























This photo is from an exhibition by Hong Kong artist PAK Sheung Chuen, which was, together with the Icelandic Pavillion and a film by Ulla van Brandenberg, one of my highlights of the Biennale. This particular work was called 'A Travel Without Visual Experience', for which the artist had travelled to Malaysia with his eyes covered, as if he were blind, for the entire journey. He took photos of all the places that he went to in order for his "future" eyes to view the landscape and sights at a later time. The photographs that he took form the only reference for the artist of his time in Malaysia. For the Biennale, these images are hung in a blacked out room, making it impossible to see the images unless you take your camera with you and blindly photograph Chuen's photographs for your own "future" eyes to view when you return to the daylight outside.

Friday 6th November































Today we arrived in Venice to a sky the colour of pearl. When a little bit of blue appeared, the locals rushed to put their washing out. That evening it rained, as it would rain every evening for the duration of our stay. Either the Venetians are very ambitious trying to dry anything outside in November, or this is purely for the benefit of all the tourists in town with their digital SLRs. And there are many of them.

Thursday, 5 November 2009

Thursday 5th November
































This was such a barbaric looking shelter in an otherwise serene park in Pimlico. I went there to hand deliver a job application to the Tate. The man at front desk wished me good luck as he pointed me in the direction of HR. The woman at HR grunted once, nodded, and pressed the buzzer to let me out again.

Wednesday 4th November






























Today Sarah and I had at date at 11.30am at the Market Cafe on Brushfield Street. She said she would come a la Sophie Calle, which I took to mean she would be in disguise. I thought about wearing Raoul's black wig from Halloween but decided against it. Sarah thought about wearing oversized sunglasses but then realised she would just look like a person sitting inside wearing oversized sunglasses in November. When we met we looked just as we always did. But it was still fun.

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

Tuesday 3rd November






























Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow

Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head
(chip chop chip chop the last man's dead)

Monday, 2 November 2009

Monday 2nd November






























The first view I ever had of London was of Liverpool Street Station, as I imagine it must be to many travellers stepping off the Stansted Express.
Now it is my local station and has become, like so many things in London, something that you now take for granted when you once thought it wonderful.
Today I took a different walk to the station and came upon this statue by Botero. I love the feel of her round, cool feet, and the way that everything in the distance - the construction cranes and railway arches - look tiny in comparison to her gargantuan seething self.

Sunday, 1 November 2009

Sunday 1st November






























Today was miserable, it poured all morning and Raoul and I were nursing Halloween hangovers. For some reason we thought that a visit to Ikea would cheer us up. Ikea is a wonderful place for picking up things you didn't ever realise you were missing from your life, like cheese-slices and pickled herring. I have been to Ikeas in four different countries and I love how the suburbs they are in feel the same no matter where in the world you are. This photograph was taken of the Tescos 'Extra' across the road from Ikea. Also another great place for spending money on things you don't really need.

Saturday 31st October

































I spied this man through the window of an apartment block just off Sloane Square. He reminded me a little of my own (much more alert) Farfar who, throughout my life, I have always seemed to meet in hotel lobbies and apartment foyers. I felt a little guilty about capturing this man in such a vulnerable state, so an hour or so later I went back to check on him. A teenage boy 20 metres ahead of me beat me to it by knocking loudly on the glass window and running off down the street. When the man awoke abruptly I was the first person he saw, smiling at him through the window.