...still wandering, still wondering...

And as I wandered, I wondered...will the the novelty of London ever wear off? Hmm, I don't think so. I've been walking through the heart of the city nearly every day for over two months now and still the sights haven't gotten the least bit old or tiresome. I guess that's because London is a city (like so many others) that's always evolving, always changing.

Though often I wander through the same areas, they're never really the same- I mean the sky is different, the clouds, the light, the hues of colour, the crowds, the people, the buskers, the songs the buskers sings, the magician switches places with the entertainer, the clown disappears and in his place another settles, a Romanian drifter wooing children with a snake, a plump smiley far-eastern woman selling peanuts. Diversity. To me, the most beautiful thing about London is its diversity- the people, colours, languages, markets, the food, flags, fusion, art- always different, always changing and so are we....

Sadly, I sort of knew it was too good to last, working and wandering in the heartland. In a couple of weeks, the charity I work for will be moving offices to Hanger Lane and though a part of me is looking forward to exploring and getting to know West London a bit better (always kind of eluded me), I know I'm really going to miss being at the centre of everything. A few recent pictures....

-red rally/ yellow's too-

...photobomb...

..love this one...

Museum of London: Estuary (and walking)

A friend of mine who works at the Museum of London told me about this exhibition and said that I would like it... she was right! It was incredible! I've always had this strange affinity with water, wherever I go I'm always drawn to nearby lakes, reservoirs, bogs, creeks, and rivers. The thames estuary in particular has always fascinated me. Over the years I've travelled to/ and walked along a number of different areas dotted along the estuary. I remember one trip I took in winter to Canvey Island years ago. The landscape was beyond otherworldly, shrouded in fog, remote and timeless.

The exhibition itself was really varied. My favourite part was John Smith's film installation, I think I must have spent over half an hour watching the sea, it was really memorising and reminded me of a section I recently read in the latest issue of 'Country Walking;' 'I remembered what someone once told me about not needing a TV in a house with a sea view, as the sights out your window were far more rich and involving and indeed changeable.' 

Jock McFadyen's paintings were beautiful too, I don't want to give away too much, I really can't recommend this exhibition enough; informative, inspiring and free.

After we visited the exhibition, my sister and I decided to explore the docklands and got the DLR to Pontoon Dock where we visited the very beautiful Thames Barrier park. We then travelled back to West India Quay where we met my friend who after lunch took us on a walk to Limehouse Basin, from there we followed the Limehouse Cut towards Bow. It was really fascinating. Every time I begin to feel like I know London, I'm exposed to parts I never even knew existed! My friend Halima (who works for the Museum) runs walks in east London/ docklands area and has also produced a series of downloadable audio recordings on her website which you can listen to.

Check out her amazing website, I would def recommend downloading the recordings onto your ipod/ phone and trying out on some of these walks for yourself...

 http://halimakhanom41.wix.com/wandereast

I've included some info about the exhibition as well as some of the pictures I took on the day.

Estuary brings together the work of 12 artists who have been inspired by the outer limits of the Thames where the river becomes the sea. The exhibition marks the 10th anniversary of the Museum of London Docklands, a converted Georgian warehouse on West India Quay. 

With its dramatic landscape – desolate mudflats and saltmarshes, vast open skies, container ports, power stations and seaside resorts – the Estuary has long been a rich source of inspiration for artists and writers. Through film, photography, painting and printmaking, the contemporary artists featured in this exhibition offer new insight into this often overlooked, yet utterly compelling, environment and the people that live and work there.

the ship that followed the crow

...far beyond the wind farm, lies the red forts of shivering sands...

bronze, a shade green

the future-

London Pleasure Gardens

....abandoned....

a place called poplar

-another tooting sunset-

pretty lady, pretty baby

she kind of went a bit potty (like me)

urban exploration: springfield asylum

I used to cut through Springfield everyday to get to school when I was at Burntwood and more often than not I'd hide out in the grounds when I bunked off (never was a very good student!) But until this recent trip, I'd never actually discovered the creepy abandoned and recently boarded up parts....

It was quite strange and freaky walking down some of the too too silent halls, knowing that a) they're probably ghosts around b) we'd be in BIG trouble if we got caught, but I think both of these sum up the appeal of urban exploration! 

Springfield is very much a world of its own, a crack den for junkies, a self contained enclosure with a church, nursery, lots of old Victorian buildings, many people (otherworldly kind), beautiful gardens and even a Costa. The building shown in the below video have now been completely boarded off and the grounds are rapidly being regenerated, much to local protest, new flats, a shopping centre, and even a school have been proposed! :-/ What's happening to Tooting....

...found on youtube....

...some pictures I took....

the secret world of springfield

Malcolm X/ Ellen Gallagher: AxME

I quite randomly went to see this exhibition at the Tate Modern a while ago. It was quite interesting... Strangely enough I had a really long conversation with a friend about African hair not too long ago, earlier on in the day this same friend had given a talk on Malcolm X, his life and his conversion to orthodox Islam. 

It was during his second pilgrimage to Mecca, after Malcolm X broke off from the Nation of Islam that he came to accept and understand the concept of brotherhood in Islam. In a letter he wrote; 'I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colours together, irrespective of their colour.' One of my favourite lines in the Quran is the following: 'O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another.' 

So anyway as my friend and I were talking about Islam, in particular race and Islam,  I was reminded of how beautiful and simple the concept really is (or at least should be). We're made the way we are by God right, we were coloured and shaped by Him and thus we are perfect. Colour, shape, appearance... these aren't things that we should obsess over. These should be things we accept openly- colour, any colour is a given, the norm, something that just is, something you shouldn't be ashamed of, something you shouldn't try to change. Somehow we got talking about how skewed our (societies) perceptions on beauty have become, even (or maybe especially) amongst people from ethnic minorities. In Pakistan, as in Somalia, the elders still consider fair to be beautiful, skin lightening creams are widespread... so this is when we got onto the topic of African hair. 

We ended up talking about the amount of time, effort and money people spend on their hair; the pain associated with relaxing hair, the treatments, extensions etc. And for what? Because somehow people have come to believe that doing so will make them appear more beautiful. While wandering around the different rooms, I found a lot of Gallager's artwork to reflect our words, and maybe that's why I found the exhibition so interesting. Def worth a visit, have included info from the Tate website below. 

Ellen Gallagher is one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists to have emerged from North America since the mid-1990s. Her gorgeously intricate and highly imaginative works are realised with a wealth of virtuoso detail and wit. This is her first major solo exhibition in the UK, providing the first ever opportunity to explore an overview of her twenty-year career.

Gallagher brings together imagery from myth, nature, art and social history to create complex works in a wide variety of media including painting, drawing, relief, collage, print, sculpture, film and animation. The exhibition explores the themes which have emerged and recurred in her practice, from her seminal early canvases through to recent film installations and new bodies of work.

In her series of wig-map grid collages, Double Natural, POMP-BANG, andeXelento, Gallagher has appropriated and incorporated found advertisements for hair and beauty products from the 1930s to the late 1970s from publications such as Ebony, Our World, and Black Stars. These advertisements fostered ideals in black beauty through wigs and hair adornments, which Gallagher has then recontextualised, collaging the Afro wig elements and embellishing them with plasticine. As she comments: ‘The wig ladies are fugitives, conscripts from another time and place, liberated from the “race” magazines of the past. But again, I have transformed them, here on the pages that once held them captive.’

That Modern Old View

Kew Revisited

...river wanders...

a leaf sits on your hat

Tadpoles from Outer Space

...wildflowers, where did you find them...

not all the lakes and bogs in the world

 

Between Dreams

beware of the monster tree

...he doesn't like to be bothered...

stalker butterfly

 

Book #4: Sy's Poems

Ahh nothing beats that feeling you get when a book you've been putting together forever finally arrives in the post! Sy's Poem's is pretty much a book version of my blog but contains a whole load of unpublished material too... I'll make this available to buy some day maybe, watch this space...

the thing about courage

Questions and Answers

...classic Biffy...

...to me, you're strange and you're beautiful...

-a coloured kite, dancing in warm wind-

...a postcard, from me to you....